


Red Hand

by Thingsareswinging



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, F/M, For Want of a Nail, exiled Azula
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2020-02-08 11:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 40,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18622798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thingsareswinging/pseuds/Thingsareswinging
Summary: It has been said that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons, but generally it is not meant to be the fathers doing the visiting.In which Ozai's self-control is even less evident than usual at a critical moment, and the consequences are felt for years afterwards.





	1. Down the Barrel of a Gun

Once dad had left, Sokka found himself wondering about death more than some people (Katara) would have liked him to. Occasionally, in his more fanciful moods, he thought he might be snatched from beneath the ice by a gigantic sea monster, or possibly swept up in a storm and flung into the air.

It wasn’t maudlin, he was just aware of the dangers, thank you very much. Knowing how close the village was to starvation at any given moment made him a more determined hunter; being hyperaware of how useful parkas were at fending off teeth ( _not very_ ) reminded him to stay alert during the long summer days and endless winter nights. He was healthy and normal and he and Katara had long ago mutually decided to stop pointing out what was wrong with each other.

It was a small community these days. You couldn’t afford to argue for very long.

So Sokka had grown up considering the very reasonable possibility that there was danger behind every hill and lurking in every shadow.

Of course, he thought, knuckles whitening on his spear, staring down the metal ship bearing down on the walls he’d spent days trying to keep up and showing no sign of slowing, he probably should have guessed it’d be the most obvious answer: murdered by the Fire Nation. At least it was a tradition by this point, but still. It was always kind of disappointing to realise your life story was going to have a completely predictable ending.

Still, all that stuff with the Avatar was different. So at least Sokka could die claiming he’d yelled at someone famous.

* * *

Iroh was used to the feeling of guilt by now. Fear had been gnawing at his gut for years now, churning with the certain knowledge of how many things he had left to ruin. How every decision he made had the potential to turn to disaster.

Take, for example, this morning. When he’d got the message, his first instinct had been to burn it, let it turn to a speck of ash, let it drift away and not bother them. The world seemed so very distant here in this land of ice and water and endless daylight. It had almost seemed like nothing could touch them, that if he ignored the truth it wouldn't matter very much. Maybe he should have done that. Maybe he should have taken responsibility for the first time in years, and shouldered the knowledge alone.

He had, at least, not told the crew. But he’d been sentimental, been a fool. He’d thought family should know.

You would have thought that if there was one thing he had learned by now, it was that there was danger in knowing something too soon.

* * *

Sokka pulled himself from the wreckage of Bato’s house, snow cascading off his shoulders, in time to see the prow of the ship drop, and for a second he thought that maybe, just maybe, his defences had been worth something after all, that at least once they’d killed him their stupid boat would be damaged and they’d at least have to spend some time repairing it- (that was where the bar was, now. He’d be happy if he managed to slightly inconvenience them, if, after he was dead, they'd kick themselves for not pulling up to the jetty like normal people.)

But no, it was just a gangplank. A gangplank that added a massive structural weakness that went all the way down to the waterline. But it had held up so far, so there was something he was missing.

He set his shoulders, sliding his boomerang out of its sheath, forcing his breathing to stay even, aware of the eyes on his back, willing his knees not to shake. Here it came.

A figure ambled, actually _ambled_ , down the gangplank, looking for all the world like they belonged there. The wind whipped in their hair, pulling it loose from a topknot, and over the roar of his heart it suddenly occurred to Sokka what was wrong here.

It was a girl. The Fire Nation had sent a girl to fight him.

Was this some kind of _joke_? Did he not even rate an actual soldier? If he could trust himself to speak without whimpering, he’d definitely be raising some complaints right now.

The girl stepped lightly from the end of the gangplank, her boots sinking slightly into the powdered snow that was all that was left of his useless wall. She pulled her cloak around herself, eyes apparently transfixed on the ground, and it was so surreal Sokka was almost more curious than terrified.

The seconds dragged out. Sokka was aware of murmuring behind him. In a second or two, one of the kids Sokka was responsible for was going to take all that stuff he’d been telling them _seriously_ , and way too late he was suddenly aware of what he shouldn’t have been doing for the last couple of years.

Maybe a few more lessons on where to hide when firebenders showed up would have been a better idea.

So he shuffled forward, and cleared his throat. This made no obvious difference to the girl, who was still fascinated by her own shoes.

“Leave,” Sokka declared, as loudly as he could, forcing his voice as deep as it would go. “Now.”

She blinked, and shook her head violently, before finally looking up. And that seemed to be it. Sokka was _almost_ sure he was imagining the sound of panicked whispering from the Fire Nation ship.

He scowled as menacingly as he could. “I won’t tell you again,” he said, in an almost-passable imitation of Dad, gesturing with his spear. The girl frowned at some internal thought, but there was a distant look on her face. Like she wasn’t even paying attention.

“Well. I warned you,” he said. Those seemed like pretty good last words. He reared back, and threw the boomerang as hard as he could.

There was an explosion of crimson, and the girl’s head was thrown backward, stumbling back, staining the snow black with blood, twisting drunkenly until she was bent double, hair falling in a ragged curtain in front of her face.

Sokka watched in open-mouthed shock, barely catching the boomerang as it slapped back into his palm, frantically replaying the last five seconds in his mind, trying to make sense of what he’d just seen.

She hadn’t even _tried_ to dodge.

He couldn’t fight the instinct to apologise, but as he took a cautious step towards her- _see, this was why girls shouldn’t be fighting_ \- her head jerked upwards, and through the smear of blood that was the right side of her face he saw golden eyes fix on him.

She was paying attention now.

Before he had time to do anything she sprang forward, fist raised, sparks impossibly pale rising off her and a lance of blue-white fire launched towards him and as his life flashed before his eyes (mostly snow with occasional boat trips) the wind howled and picked him up and flung him bodily into what was left of his wall.

Oh. Right. That guy.

* * *

In spite of himself, Aang was excited. He’d never seen _blue_ firebending before.

He strode forward, and puffed out his chest. Now, what was it he’d planned to say?

“Hi. I’m the Avatar? I assume you’ve heard of me.”

Yeah, that’d… do…

The firebender spun on her heel, charging straight for where Sokka was pulling himself to his feet. Aang blinked.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had just _ignored_ him. Had the Fire Nation languages changed in the last hundred years or however long this was supposed to have been? Had she just not heard him? It looked like she’d just been hit pretty hard in the head, so maybe she still had that weird ringing thing going on-

Sokka screeched as the firebender descended upon him, and Aang reminded himself that this was actually a serious problem. The Fire Nation and the Water Tribes were at _war_ now!

“Wait! I want to talk! I’ll go with- I said I’ll-” he flung a twist of air in her direction, tripping her up and giving Sokka time to scoot backwards, and in desperation waved to the armoured heads poking over the lip of the ship. “Can’t you stop her? I’m trying to surrender here!”

This seemed to cause some comment among the crew, but they didn’t move to actually do anything.

* * *

Katara had lost track of why anything was happening a while back. It had all made sense until the point where the Fire Nation had ignored Aang’s surrender. Which was good- the last thing anyone wanted was the Avatar in Fire Nation hands- but this firebender was trying to _kill_ Sokka and it looked like-

Blue fire punched through their house, collapsing it in a hiss of melting snow, as Sokka desperately hurled his spear at her, she batted it aside without taking her eyes off him.

-Like she was prepared to destroy the whole village if it got in the way.

Realisation struck. With a sudden flurry of energy, she turned on her heel and ran away from the sea, to where Aang’s flying bison was placidly watching the proceedings.

* * *

Sokka didn’t have time to think about how close he was to death right at this second, because it was chasing him wearing the bloodstained face of a girl throwing blue fire around, and it was only the timely intervention of the Avatar that had, so far, kept him from turning him into so much charcoal.

But it looked like his luck had run out now, as his back hit the snow wall and his spear trembled in his hands and this maniac girl advanced on him, blood in her hair and on her collar and everywhere in between, fist raised-

And there was a thundering crash as the space between them was suddenly full of hair and hot breath and bellowing rumbles and Katara leant over the lip of the saddle and held out her hand.

“Grab on!” she yelled, and he didn’t hesitate. Turning to look at the Avatar, she nodded, he screamed, of all things, “Yip, yip!” and as she hauled him over the side the bottom dropped out of his stomach and all of a sudden the village looked so small.

He kept his guard up until he saw the firebender turn on her heel and stalk back to her stupid overdesigned ship without even a glance at the village. Then the adrenaline gurgled out of him, and he flopped bonelessly onto his back.

This had been the _weirdest_ day.

* * *

The crew were too well-trained to shrink back as Azula stalked up the gangplank, seemingly oblivious to her injury, but Iroh was fairly good at reading body language.

“Follow it,” his niece snapped, pointing skyward, towards the retreating shape of the Avatar’s flying bison. As one, the crew leapt into action, beginning the complicated process of reversing the ship. It was almost as though they were grateful for the distraction. Azula stalked past him without even meeting his eye, heading for her quarters without another word.

Iroh sighed into his hands. Well. That had actually gone better than he was afraid it might.

* * *

_“Zuko.”_

_He didn’t turn to look at her. There would have been no point, through all the bandages. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure he was even awake. Up until she’d seen the rise and fall of his chest, she hadn’t been sure he was even_ alive _. He’d been in his room for over a week. In all that time, the only people to see him had been doctors and his uncle._

_She’d heard he was going to lose the eye. That, it turned out, was what it took for her to start giving a damn, apparently._

_“Zuko, you awake?”_

_He twitched, one arm moving upwards, but otherwise made no sign. The veins in his neck were bunched, his head lolling back, bandages obscuring the whole top of his head._

_“Zuko, I’m…”_

_She was angry. She was furious. She was so full of acid rage she needed to scream or cry or break something before it burned her heart to pieces._

_The details of the dispute between Zuko and the miserable sack of leather General Bujing hadn’t been made public, but there was_ no _precedent for what the Fire Lord had done. No excuse for it, no_ reason _for it..._

_Disloyalty to the Fire Lord was an attack on the Fire Nation, was treason, was a crime punishable by death. Mai knew this. Knew all the reasons she had to care, to not say the thing she wanted to._

_But then it seemed like the Fire Lord might just decide to make an example out of you for no reason at all, so what incentive did she have for keeping quiet?_

_“Zuko I’m three seconds away from jamming a knife in your dad’s throat. I’m serious. Just say the word.”_

_That, at least, got a reaction, a kind of choked cough that might have been a laugh, and then there was a sound that dropped the bottom out of her stomach. From behind her, there was the sound of the bedroom door clicking shut._

_Slowly, deliberately, Mai forced herself to turn around. After all, no matter what she thought of the current administration, she was still a Fire Nation citizen, and had been raised properly. The importance of facing your death head-on was a central cultural touchstone._

_General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, the greatest never-was the Fire Nation had ever seen, looked like he hadn’t slept in days._

_“Might I suggest,” he ventured, “a slightly less drastic course of action?”_


	2. Modern Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter at the link:
> 
> https://thingsareswinging.tumblr.com/post/184552304905/red-hand-chapter-2-thingsareswinging-avatar

Azula was sitting cross-legged on a mat in her cabin and staring at the grey walls as Iroh bustled in, bearing a tray. The Avatar may have suddenly returned, but Iroh had certain priorities.

“Tea!” he boomed, as jovially as he could, sitting down at a right-angle to her, setting the tray between them, and pouring two cups. “Here, take it.”

He couldn’t hide a smile at the way she turned to look at him, at the _fact_ she turned to look at him, took the cup without complaint. But his eyes narrowed as he realised what was wrong.

“Niece, you shouldn’t have your bandages off yet.”

The cut the Water Tribe boy had given her blazed almost from the edge of her mouth to her hairline, cutting through her eyebrow, red and cracked and livid. Azula gave him a bland look, and raised her teacup to her lips.

Iroh had seen enough losing battles to know when to back off.

“Azula, the Avatar seems to be making for the Southern Air Temple. But there are other things to consider. We will need fuel, we will need supplies. And we cannot get them from the Fire Nation any more.”

He sat, and waited. Azula’s fingers coiled around her teacup, and her breathing was loud in the little room. Her other hand rose to meet her temple as her head slumped into it. He wished he could say he was surprised.

“Azula,” he prompted, gently. “What do you want us to do?”

Azula’s eyes closed, and her breathing flattened. Too slow, Iroh recognised the tension running up her arm, saw her fingers digging into the fresh cut on her forehead, heard the exhalation-

“-Azula!”

She looked up like she wasn’t sure where she was, eyes wide and trembling as blood trickled down her face and Iroh hadn’t the words for what he’d done to her.

Not by himself, and not directly. But he could have stopped this. He could have stopped this, but he’d done nothing, and when he’d finally interfered he’d made things worse. Maybe that was why he was here, now it might be too late. Flinging himself pointlessly on the pyre of Azula’s pain might just be the only moral thing left for him to do.

Slowly, he stood, and made his way over to the washbasin in the corner of the room. Pulling a cloth out of the water, he wrung it out lightly, all without taking his eyes off his niece, still sitting placidly on the floor. Dropping back to his knees, he took her bloodied fingers in his hand, and dabbed gently at her forehead.

“Fix this,” she whispered. Or perhaps he was just imagining things.

* * *

 

Commander Zhao strode from his quarters onto his balcony, looked out over his city of tents, and found it wanting. Just like every morning. Smoke rose from the chimney-stacks of the battleships in the harbour, slaves tended to the coal stores, soldiers on the only shore leave they could get this far south slunk back to their tents, still drunk, and the sun rose. Just like _every single morning._

This was not where he had expected to end up promoted to. This had not been part of the plan. He’d expected action, visibility, a chance to show his quality in the Earth Kingdom, not keeping one eye on a bunch of illiterate savages and another on an island of isolationists like some nursemaid.

Perhaps getting married had been a mistake. Perhaps Admiral Chan thought that Zhao wanted some peace and quiet to get to know his new wife. Perhaps Zhao shouldn’t have brought his new wife on campaign with him.

But what was he supposed to do? She’d already tried to run away once, and who knew what she’d be capable of if he left her in the Caldera unsupervised. If word got around that Commander Zhao couldn’t even keep control of his own household, then this empire of canvas and coal-piles would be the best he could hope for.

Still. She, at least, had learned to be placid. He didn’t know if his nerves could have taken anything else. And she could be useful, under the right circumstances. It had been one of the reasons he’d married her, after all. That and the money, and the connections.

Connections which, now he remembered, were suddenly worthless. He’d worked hard, paid his dues, _finally_ landed a catch that had a direct line to the halls of power, and then that _damnable_ Iroh had to go and pull a stunt like that…

Sometimes, Zhao reflected, philosophically, the Royal Family were simply not worth getting involved with.

* * *

 

“So how’s the kid?”

Katara looked up to see Sokka ambling through the ruin, the lemur perched unconcernedly on his shoulder. Sokka had become a quick convert to Team Momo once it became obvious that the creature was great at hunting down and devouring bugs.

Bugs had been a terrible thing to discover. The only insect life in the South Pole was a species of small weevils that sat in the ice trying not to move too much and generally minded their own business. Whoever it was further north that had decided to give them wings and mouths and a need to fly directly up Katara’s nostrils for no reason had a lot to answer for.

“Sleeping,” she replied, standing up, wincing at the crack of her spine, and nodding towards the tent where Aang had dropped into a deep sleep almost immediately after… _that_.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed he was the Avatar before. It had made sense, right? Who else could survive in an iceberg for a century? But there was a difference between knowing something and seeing it.

Sokka padded over, his face uncharacteristically unreadable. As he paused, the lemur sprang from his shoulder and shot into the tent where Aang was sleeping. Sokka’s eyes followed it, and his brows furrowed.

“Well,” he sighed. “He’s the real deal, huh?”

Katara shrugged. “Did the airbending not tip you off?”

Sokka snorted, mildly. “I don’t know, there’s probably ways to fake that. But this… statues glowing and _him_ glowing and floating into the air and screaming and _he's_ got to beat the Fire Lord? He’s going to save the world?”

“You don’t believe he can do it.” Sokka’s mind was a mystery Katara was pretty sure she’d cracked a long time ago. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a little disappointed.

Sokka’s hand rested awkwardly on the hit of his machete, and he shook his head. “I think if he’s left to his own devices he’ll sit around befriending whales until thirty seconds before the end of the world. He’s not got a clue.”

Katara scowled. “Sure, he’s got a long way to go, but I think you’re underestimating him.”

Sokka sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe. Probably not, though. Point is, he’s got no idea what it’s gonna be like out here.”

“Like you do?” she snorted? “Aang’s been all over the world, seen things neither of us have-”

“ _Seen_ -” Sokka started, too loud, and froze at the sound of Momo yowling softly from the tent. After a few heartbeats of perfect stillness, he started again, more even. “Katara, everyone he knew is _dead_. You know what Dad told us. It was dangerous enough when Gran-Gran made the trip from the North down to us; it’s only gonna have gotten worse since. The Fire Nation’s everywhere now.”

Katara sat down heavily, by the embers of the fire. It had been a long day. “Sokka, what are you saying?”

He joined her, his descent more controlled, and some of the tension slipped off his shoulders. “It’s on us. We’ve got to take responsibility for him.” He looked only slightly embarrassed to be saying it.

Katara goggled. “...You’re serious,” she said, eventually. ”You’re actually seriously saying you’re going to tell the Avatar what to do.”

“ _We’re_ going to keep the Avatar _alive_ ,” he responded, staring hard at the remains of the campfire. “Right? He might be amazing and glowy and all that, but right now he thinks he can talk to firebenders. That’s not the kind of mistake you get to keep making. But it’s something we might be able to stop him doing.”

Katara realised with a sinking heart Sokka had a point.

“You _are_ serious, aren’t you,” she sighed. “You’ve actually thought about this.”

“I am a serious guy,” Sokka claimed. “And I don’t like what you’re implying with that.”

* * *

 

Ty Lee remembered hearing her Dad quote from a book of philosophy once. He’d been sitting in his high-backed chair, holding court like he’d tried to do sometimes, flicking through the book and reading aloud whenever a passage caught his attention.

One quote had been something like ‘every morning, remind yourself that there is nothing waiting in the day that you cannot deal with’. Dad had liked that one, and told all his daughters to remember it and apply it in their daily routine.

Ty Lee was trying. She was really, _really_ trying.

“Do you understand? This is the single most significant development in the last fifty years. The Avatar has returned, as weak and vulnerable as he’s ever going to be. It’s not a question of _if_ he’s going to be taken down, it’s simply a matter of who is going to do it.”

She sighed, and pulled the blanket over her head, trying to return to the memory of her family home, of her sisters. Of her father and mother, who probably remembered her name. Of her father’s face when he introduced her _new husband_ -

Zhao talked to himself constantly. He just pretended he was talking to her.

* * *

 

Iroh closed the cabin door behind him, and nodded amiably at the waiting Lieutenant Jee. Jee saluted, nervousness rolling off him in waves, and fell in step behind his General.

“Sir…” he ventured, eventually. “Your orders?”

Iroh sighed slightly. “It seems our first priority should be to do a little foraging. Coal will be a bigger problem eventually, but we have enough for a while, yes?”

“Yes, General.” Jee paused. “But… are we pursuing the Avatar? Because… he can fly.” And the other thing. The thing he was never, ever going to ask about. The thing where this expedition was nominally being led by a girl that stared at things nobody could see.

Iroh suddenly laughed, a full-throated sound that bounced off the metal walls. “True! That is going to make things a bit more of a challenge. But I am sure opportunity will present itself, if we let it.”

“Yes, General,” Jee, said, dutifully.

“Now, Lieutenant,” Iroh said warmly, slapping one hand to his shoulder. “Let’s go see about getting supplies, shall we?”

Jee followed in Iroh’s wake, trying to put any further worries out of his mind. But one question rattled around his head.

What had _happened_ in the Palace?

* * *

 

_She’d made it through the funeral staring at the back of her own head. She hadn’t cried. She’d watched her brother’s body laid out in white and she’d felt… light. She’d watched her father kill her brother like it was happening to a stranger._

_Zuko was dead. Zuko was dead over a minor disagreement in tactics. Zuko was dead and Father had killed him. He’d gone to the duelling grounds expecting to fight General Bujing and instead Father had caved his skull in while he’d cried on his knees._

_Mai had gone into mourning, leaving the Caldera still wearing her funeral robes. That seemed… right, somehow. Like that was the correct thing to do. But Ty Lee was with her family, and Uncle had vanished, and now it was just her, alone. With Father. Whose fist had come away stained with blood._

_She’d been pleased, at first. When Zuko had kicked up such a fuss in his first meeting. When he’d made himself so visible, so obvious. Every second Father spent on Zuko was a second he spent distracted. Zuko had always been good at drawing Father’s anger onto himself._

_Too good._

_Her door swung open and she snapped to her feet, scrambling to pull herself together, pushing the rumples out of her funeral robes. Shadowed in the doorway was Ozai, tall and silent, already changed out of white, face a mask._

_She dropped to her knees in a perfect bow, something she’d learned would mollify him a long time ago, and waited, hoping blindly that her old methods would still work._

_“Get up,” he barked, and Azula’s stomach churned as she recognised from his voice it was going to be bad. “We have work to do.”_


	3. A Mission of Instruction

People had gotten so _touchy_ in the last hundred years. You couldn’t even ride elephant-koi without people accusing you being from the Fire Nation and tying you to giant statues of yourself!

Okay that might not be a _totally_ universal experience, but he definitely remembered the Kyoshi Islanders being a lot more laid back about this kind of stuff.

Katara was keeping herself busy yelling at the Kyoshi Warrior with the biggest headband, which Aang was _pretty_ sure meant she was the leader, but Sokka was being weirdly quiet. Aang had never seen anything Sokka didn’t have an opinion on before, and he wouldn’t have bet Kyoshi Island as the thing to do it, but hey, Sokka was a kind of weird guy. Maybe he didn’t like fish?

No, wait, he was from the Water Tribe, if he didn’t like fish he wouldn’t like eating, and Sokka _definitely_ liked eating.

Anyway Katara was starting to run out of breath, which meant he should probably loosen these ropes now.

* * *

 

Katara shook the blood back into her hands, feeling vaguely stupid. She’d gone into _so much detail_ in her explanation why none of them could be Fire Nation spies. She’d listed her ancestors, she’d talked about Aang’s tattoos, and how difficult they’d be to fake, she’d demanded they free her arms to demonstrate that she was a waterbender, and all it had taken was for Aang to do his marble trick and all of a sudden the whole village was fawning over them.

The commander of the local soldiers, a girl probably not much older than her that had eventually introduced herself as Suki, at least had the good manners to apologise before spinning sharply on her heel and motioning for her troops to follow her.

As Katara watched the Kyoshi Warriors making their way back to the village, she was suddenly aware of Sokka’s presence at her elbow.

“Hey,” he said, quieter than she was expecting, smiling faintly. He drew up until he was parallel with her, and they watched the whole village falling under Aang’s weird kind of charm.

Sokka seemed to have something on his mind. For once, Katara couldn’t begin to guess what it was. But he kept shifting his weight, and stealing shadowed glances up the hill, where the Kyoshi Warriors had retreated to.

“Katara,” he said, and there was something in his voice she’d never heard before. “You should go see if they’ll give you some pointers.”

Katara blinked. That _couldn’t_ mean what it sounded like it meant.

But Sokka seemed to be in a mood for surprising her. “I’m just saying, they took us down pretty easily. And the waterbending thing’s not really fighting ready just yet, so, you know, take the opportunities that show up, right?”

Katara blinked. Right. Okay. This was new.

...Not _that_ new, though. He’d been subdued ever since they left the South Pole. Ever since that firebender girl showed up and nearly killed him.

Okay, so he was finally, _finally_ reconsidering some of the stupid crap he’d spent so long taking as read, and it was obviously denting his pride to do so. So the thing to do would be to act gracious and not call him out on anything and let him save a little face.

She was absolutely not going to do that.

“ _Sokka_ ,” she said, mock-scandalised. “Are you telling a _girl_ to learn to _fight_? What would Dad think if he could hear you now?”

She’d been half-expecting him to storm off in a huff, to say something glib, or to just deflect. But his eyes were fixed on her shoes and his shoulders slumped and she remembered, not for the first time, that it was so difficult to predict what he’d take extremely seriously.

“I’ve been an idiot. And I’m sorry. I won’t make any excuses for how I’ve acted. But I’m gonna do better; I promise.”

...Okay so now _she_ had to deflect or this conversation would get really embarrassing to be having ten feet away from where an entire village was watching Aang spin marbles.

“This is just because of how that firebender girl kicked you clear across the village, isn’t it?”

Sokka’s lips pursed. “That might have been a factor, sure. But I _do_ think you should go to the Kyoshi Warriors.”

Katara grabbed his hand, and if she was squeezing a little tighter than she meant to, it wasn’t like he was going to complain.

“I’ve got a better idea,” she announced, with a grin, and couldn’t help but laugh at the suddenly hunted look that fell across his face.

* * *

 

“Train us.”

Commander Suki blinked. In the silence left by the Water Tribe girl’s announcement, the sound of her warriors assembling in a curious semicircle behind her was loud and awkward.

She should probably respond.

“Excuse me?”

The boy audibly smacked his own forehead. “What my sister means is she’d be extremely grateful if someone could give her some pointers in how to do that thing where you jump out of trees and kick people in the head.”

Suki blinked, and felt her attention turn towards the boy, even as his sister folded her arms emphatically.

“Is that right?”

He shrugged. “We’ve never seen trees before. She found that stunt really inspiring.”

“Also him,” the girl interjected, like Suki might have forgotten _that_ little detail. “He needs to learn too.”

“Katara, I told you, they’re not gonna go for that-”

“Why not? You don’t know anything about this island! Don’t _presume_ -”

The boy turned to face his sister, the two of them having apparently completely forgotten there was anyone else in the room. Suki felt a few of her warriors glance sideways at her, but knowing exactly when to strike was an important skill.

“I’m just saying, have you seen any boy soldiers here? Because I haven’t, and I’m guessing there’s a reason for that!”

“Maybe they all just weren’t good enough!”

The boy blinked heavily. “That’s- that’s _stupid_! That’s a stupid thing to say! I don’t think you even _believe_ that!”

The girl- Katara- didn’t even miss a beat. Suki was impressed. “That doesn’t matter! You said it yourself- we need every advantage we can get. What’ll you do if that firebender girl catches up to us?”

The boy held up one long finger, and turned to face Suki and the rest of the Warriors. “We’re being chased by a crazy firebender lady. Blue fire, doesn’t talk much. You’ll know her when you see her. Anyway-”

“She also nearly killed Sokka.”

“Hey! I got a shot in! Don’t act like it was _totally_ one-sided!”

“Sokka she was standing still. She let you hit her for free.”

“Yeah that was weird. _Anyway_ , I don’t even know how much learning how to use a…” he glanced around the dojo, and looked visibly disappointed- “a fan is gonna help. Do fans work against firebenders?”

Suki felt compelled to stand up for her people. “Better than you’d expect.”

“See?” Katara pounced on the answer like she’d been waiting for it. “We need this, Sokka, so stop whining and get with the program already!”

Suki felt this was the moment to step in. “Okay, this has all been really entertaining, but do you mind explaining what, exactly, is going on?”

* * *

 

Aang was starting to see the downsides of constant adulation. It had been fun the first few hours, flattering for the rest of the first day, but after the feast in his honour (half of which he couldn’t actually eat, but it was nice of them to make the effort) and the crowd waiting outside his door the next morning, and Sokka and Katara vanishing (they’d said something about training with the Kyoshi Warriors, which was great! obviously) and another day of everything he said and did being scrutinised, and _another_ night of feasting that Aang was increasingly not in the mood for, it _really_ shouldn’t have surprised anyone that he’d left his room by the window before the sun was up.

The streets were actually not deserted, to Aang’s mild surprise. A figure was striding across the main street, coming up from the beach, wrapped in a thick grey cloak, hood pulled up.

Aang brightened up. Another traveller!

Keeping a respectful distance, Aang wandered towards the figure as they headed towards a market stall that was already being set up for the day.

* * *

 

Lieutenant Jee knocked on the door to the Princess’ cabin, not really expecting an answer. He’d expected silence, and a locked door.

He hadn’t expected the door to swing inwards at his knock.

Possibly he should have.

* * *

 

Aang flitted from shadow to shadow, heading up the hill towards the dojo, trying not to draw any attention to himself. It was okay, it was okay, she hadn’t seen him yet, which meant there was time, she didn’t seem aggressive, maybe nobody else would be in danger, maybe-

This was absolutely not how he had intended to start the day.

Barging through the door, he quickly spotted Sokka and Katara, even through the makeup, going through warmups.

“Guys! We’ve got a problem.”

* * *

 

“General.”

“Ah, Lieutenant. I trust you can keep order while I head into town for a little shopping. We should take the opportunity to restock our-”

“General, she’s gone.”

* * *

 

Katara pressed her back to the wall of a house, so tense and nervous she almost jumped out of her skin when Sokka hissed her name from behind her.

“Katara. _Katara_. I’ve got a plan. It’s not a good one, so I’d appreciate you having a way better one right now.”

Katara leant out into the road, and ducked back almost immediately as the firebender turned, drifting up the street. She’d been doing that for as long as they’d been watching; just… wandering back and forth, like a leopard-seal that wasn’t hungry just yet. From across the alley, Commander Suki was starting to look impatient.

“Sorry, Sokka. I’ve got nothing. What’s your plan?”

“I’m gonna test a theory. If it looks like I’m about to die, please save me.”

Katara could suddenly see the future. She turned, panic rising in her throat, but he was already gone.

* * *

 

Sokka tore down the alley before anyone could stop him, heart in his throat, _really_ not convinced by this whole ‘war fan’ concept, in spite of Suki’s assurances.

He wished he’d had time to wipe off the warpaint. But then he’d been wearing warpaint the first time, so maybe it wouldn’t matter?

He really hoped it wouldn’t matter. It would suck if it mattered.

He burst out into the morning sun, the firebender girl only a few feet away from him, back to him, head turning towards him, grey cloak slipping off her shoulders showing red armour beneath it, but his eye was drawn to her face. The cut he’d given her blazed red and angry. He must have hit her harder than he’d thought.

“Remember me?” he said, keeping the quivering in his voice down to a minimum.

She blinked, slowly. Sokka decided to give her a hint. Reaching behind him as slowly as possible, eyes locked with hers, breath slow, even-

His arm flicked out, flinging his boomerang at her as hard as he could. Maybe he’d get another-

She moved like a snake, arm darting out, spinning on her heel, and snatched the boomerang out of the air.

Okay. Right.

Sokka grinned in as unterrified a way as he could, and ran for the shoreline, blue fire exploding around him.

* * *

 

Suki had been a little dismissive, at first. Sure, these two Water Tribes siblings had talked up the crazy firebender with the blue fire, but Suki, privately, had had her doubts. The two of them had probably never _seen_ a firebender before. Suki had- they still had the occasional marauder band or couple of spies that made it to shore. She’d fought firebenders before.

She’d never fought a firebender like this. Sokka was in full flight, just _barely_ staying ahead of fire Suki could feel curling her eyebrows even from here.

The wind howled, and with a rush of air, the Avatar arrived, looking harried.

“What's the plan?”

“Aang!” Katara suddenly shouted, from behind Suki, breaking out of cover, waving down the Avatar. “We’re leaving! Get the bison!”

“But-” the Avatar gestured to the rapidly retreating forms of Sokka and the living explosion that was the firebender at this point.

“Just like the village! Go!”

The boy looked agonised, but only for a second, leaping skyward and unfurling his staff, shooting away to wherever the Sky Bison had been stabled. Before Katara could run, Suki grabbed her wrist.

“Good luck,” she said, not really knowing why, breath coming out in a rush. Katara looked for a second like she wanted to say something, but nodded, and Suki let her go.

* * *

 

Sokka wondered if this was going to become a habit. Still, at least they were getting good at it now.

Safely sitting on Appa’s back, they’d circled lazily until the Fire Nation ship launched after them, and _then_ they were gone, soaring into the morning sunshine.

He took the opportunity to change out of the heavy leathers the Kyoshi Warriors wore, stashing it in the saddle, and pulled back on his normal clothes. It felt good to be back in blue again. It was only as he was using a rag to get rid of the last bits of warpaint from behind his ears that Katara spoke, and ruined the morning even more than it had been already.

“You know, I’m wondering. That firebender. She’s after Aang, right?”

Sokka nodded, absently. “Sure, why?”

“D’you think,” she continued, dreamily, “d’you think she’s confused about which one Aang is?”

Sokka scowled, and Aang, from his seat on Appa’s head, half-turned to face the conversation.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and Katara turned to face him, away from her brother.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you had died, the next Avatar would be from the Water Tribes, right?”

“Yep,” Aang replied.

“And everyone thought you were dead.”

“I assume so?”

“So the Fire Nation would assume that the next Avatar will be from the Water Tribes.”

“This is all making sense so far,” Aang confirmed.

“But have you noticed that twice now the only firebender has completely ignored you, the obvious Air Nomad, and gone straight after someone else?”

“Oh no,” Sokka interrupted. “No you cannot be saying this.”

“Sokka,” Katara continued, unabated, because she hated him. “I’m pretty sure she thinks you’re the Avatar.”

Sokka groaned as Aang and Katara started laughing. “I have no idea what I did to deserve this.”

* * *

 

Iroh stared at his niece from the doorway. She was sitting, all placid again, the stolen boomerang lying at her feet. Every so often she idly ran a thumb across its edge.

He’d take it away from her, if he didn’t know how that would go.

Getting her back on the ship had been no great feat- she’d slipped from mania to catatonia once the fighting had stopped. He’d driven back the Kyoshi Warriors with a little show of force, and nobody had even died.

Really, it was the best he should have hoped for.

* * *

 

_Iroh knew the secret to a good conspiracy was to include as few people as possible. So the plan stayed between the three of them. And that meant only he could execute the most crucial part of the whole deception._

_It had been simple for a man of his standing to divert a cadaver from the war dead. Some boy from the front, a few years older than Zuko but underfed, slightly stunted. He’d died when something broke inside him, bled him to death where nobody could see._

_He’d serve._

_Iroh had been trying for the last hour to think of another way to do this. Nothing was coming to him, and time had run out. He took a breath, and raised a fist._

_The boy’s eye socket caved and the flesh burnt and Iroh tried not to think of his brother._


	4. Put on an Iron Shirt

Colonel Shinu liked to think he was a good judge of character. He’d hated Commander Zhao before he’d even met him in person, for one thing. The man was arrogant, thoughtless, a brute, and, apparently, poised to replace the late Admiral Lin.

Theoretically, that shouldn’t make much difference to Shinu- he was an Army man, as far as he was concerned the Navy could overpromote any thug they wanted, as long as they stayed patrolling the transport routes and skirmishing with whatever was left of the Earth Kingdom Navy.

But Almost-Admiral Zhao was in fact _not_ staying on the water, he was miles inland, in Colonel Shinu’s fortress and demanding Colonel Shinu’s troops and moving his _household_ into _Colonel Shinu’s quarters_.

Shinu had put up a fight, but honestly there were just too many outrages to deal with at once. Demanding that the Yu Yan get sent off on some ridiculous hunch was the biggest thing to argue about, but frankly it had quickly become a matter of spite. Commander Zhao was going to get his way, and all Shinu could do was make him wait a few days. But that was just how the Fire Nation military seemed to be structured, now.

This was what happened when you let a filicide run the country.

* * *

 

“Aang. Aang? Aang, you need to listen to me.”

* * *

 

Ty Lee stared at the boy in chains, hovering in the doorway as he was strung up like a puppet. Like this he looked small. Like a kid. His tattoos were pretty, and his clothes were made of strange materials she’d never seen before. It was-

Too late, she realised Zhao had stopped talking. His hand closed on her wrist and he pulled, dragging her forwards, feet dancing along the ground towards the Avatar and she bit her tongue and tried not to think about anything.

“Paralyse him,” he said, in that tone of voice he used on her, like he couldn’t understand why she was being so selfish.

Shaking his hand off her as delicately as she could stand, she raised her fist and neatly hit the Avatar right on the neck.

* * *

 

“Aang, can you-”

* * *

 

He stopped twitching, and his breathing evened. The guards holding the chains relaxed, cautiously, and looked impressed. Which was nice.

“How long will that last?” Zhao snapped, from behind her. She forced herself to turn to face him.

“Half an hour, maybe? It kind of depends on-”

“Your job is to stay with the prisoner. Keep him under. Do _not_ let him wake up. Do you understand?” He leaned down, breath hot on her face, and she fought the rising urge to break his nose.

She knew how that would end.

“Yeah.”

He smirked. “Good.”

* * *

 

Iroh’s primary function in the day to day running of the ship, as he saw it, was as medic. Lieutenant Jee was a capable man, had served Iroh diligently for years, was unwaveringly loyal, and Iroh was prepared to exploit every inch of that loyalty now. Jee was, by now, more in charge of commanding the ship than Iroh was. He was also the only other person on board who knew what Iroh knew, what Iroh had told Azula in a fit of misplaced honesty.

He’d taken it… solemnly. Iroh suspected he’d worked it out before he’d been told. Never mind. Iroh had other priorities.

Getting his niece to leave her bandages on was a daily struggle. She seemed to take refuge in picking at the scar, worsening and widening it. Iroh had been on campaign for most of his life, and had seen enough battle fatigue to think he recognised the symptoms. The mind could become a labyrinth, and sometimes the only way out of the maze was to tear down some walls.

What had happened to his brother? What, in turn, had he done to her?

Iroh had been fifteen when he was introduced to his brother, the infant Ozai swaddled in crimson and blowing bubbles up into his face. He’d felt so proud, so fiercely protective. But the war had called him, and Father had found him his first command, and so Iroh had gone in search of glory.

He wished, in an awful way, he could remember some defining moment, some obvious cruelty to blame. But Ozai had grown up surrounded by every luxury, attended to by their mother and father. He’d drunk deep of Iroh’s stories whenever he’d returned from the front, but never expressed a desire to join. He’d searched for the Avatar for a full two years, longer than his father, but Iroh had never heard of anything _happening_. With private amusement, Iroh had assumed that his brother had just docked at some Colony port town and got drunk for a few seasons.

And then he’d gone home, got married, started a family, and, within a decade, killed their father, driven his wife away, and taken the throne.

That… Iroh didn’t remember too much about that time. He didn’t care to, either.

* * *

 

It _had_ been an eventful week! Just the other day all those Fire Nation archers had been barging around, fighting some little bald man in yellow- she’d had an interesting time the morning after, combing through the ruins and picking up all the broken arrows- you’d be surprised how useful arrowheads could be around the house- and just this morning two strangers dropped out of the sky on a giant cow, just to talk to her! This had to be the most visitors Taku had seen at once  since the siege!

“Lady? _Lady!_ Are you listening? We’re looking for Aa- a boy, about this high, no hair, tattoos all over?”

It _was_ a shame that at least one of her visitors seemed to be such a little jerk. He’d snapped at Miyuki, and she hadn’t even done anything! This time.

“Katara, can you talk to her? She’s not listening.”

“Well you _did_ yell at her cat.”

Anyway, _everyone_ knew that if the Yu Yan were involved, they had to have come from Pouhai Stronghold. Those snipers were the main reason nobody came to visit her anymore. Oh, back in the day soldiers had come from all around to listen to her advice. Even the city crumbling around her hadn’t stopped them- she’d simply taken a sabbatical, and, once the fighting had stopped and the soldiers had burned all the corpses and taken the slaves they were going to take and killed all the rest, she’d just moved right back in and let a few people know she was still in business. She’d even had a few students. That had been nice.

“Not _intentionally!_ And besides, that thing is _weird._ ”

Then things had changed, the Fire Nation had thrown up the stronghold a few miles down the road, and the visits had dried up. Oh well.

“Fine, alright. I’ll have a try. ...Excuse me, Ma’am? We’re looking for a friend of ours. Have you seen anyone come through here recently?”

_Everyone_ knew about Pouhai Stronghold. Everyone within a hundred miles knew about the place. It kept the whole northern front fed and stocked for the Fire Nation, it housed the Yu Yan snipers, it squatted on the main road between the Fire Nation Colonies and Ba Sing Se. Who didn’t know that?

She could feel her eyes narrowing. _Who_ didn’t know that?

“Where are you from, anyway?”

“...Is it important?”

Oh well!

“Not really. Anyway your friend got dragged off to Pouhai stronghold. Good luck!”

* * *

 

Ty Lee sat on her haunches. It had been five times, now. Five quick strikes to the side of the Avatar’s neck, keeping him placid.

That wasn’t _quite_ as bad as she had estimated, but only because the boy seemed surprisingly quick to shake off chi-blocking. It wasn’t surprising, honestly- he _was_ the Avatar, apparently, so it made sense.

But it was still about twenty minutes between each strike. Which meant it had been close to two hours, now. And she was becoming increasingly aware that nobody had told her how long it would take for reinforcements to arrive and take the Avatar away.

She had a feeling Zhao wouldn’t be understanding if she tried to go for a nap.

Still. At least it was pretty obvious when he was waking up- the Avatar’s aura was a brilliant yellow that flared like a wildfire whenever he started to wake up. So that was useful.

* * *

 

The Fire Nation soldiers probably thought they were hard to track. To Katara, they might as well have paved their way through the forest. Sloppy. Bent twigs, moved dirt, leaves spiralled to the floor, there was so much _information_.

It was easy, being angry. All she had to do was pick a direction and go, and the banked fire in the back of her throat would take care of the rest.

To her right, Sokka was walking with lidded eyes, cooler than her, but that was fine. He didn’t get worked up at times like this.

She remembered, one winter when the storms had stayed for weeks at a time, and the food had begun to run out. Panic had spread through the village like a disease. Sokka had stared at the walls of their home for an hour, told her and Gran-Gran to keep the fires lit, picked up his spear, and walked out into the tundra.

He’d been gone for three days. But he’d come back, dragging the carcass of a polar-bear-dog on his sled.

Sokka would have a plan, she reassured herself as the pricks of firelight through the trees told her they were coming up on their destination. She could trust that.

* * *

 

She was being a little more manageable today. Iroh had learned not to make assumptions about how she would be tomorrow.

But for today, she was content to sit and listen to him talk, running a thumb idly along the blade of the boomerang she had confiscated. Iroh wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about that, but so far she hadn’t drawn blood on it, so he was content to call that a victory.

“Uncle.”

He stopped with a sudden shock, halfway through babbling aimlessly about the history of his favourite tsungi hornists. Her voice creaked, hoarse and underused.

“Yes, niece?” he asked, trying not to show his surprise.

Her head lolled back like it was too heavy for her, one uncovered eye staring at the ceiling.

“What are we doing here?”

* * *

 

_One last conversation. One last, vain attempt to salvage a relationship._

_“Brother.”_

_Ozai’s teeth bared in a snarl._

_“What are you playing at, Iroh?”_

_“I’m continuing a family tradition, Ozai.”_

_“You do whatever you like, Iroh. You always have, after all. But leave my daughter out of your stupid vanity project.”_

_Iroh stared into the face of his little brother, trying to find any shred of self-awareness there._

_“Brother, you need to let her go. Give her a year or two away. It will make her stronger,” Iroh pleaded, trying to lean on the only thing that might have a chance of getting through. “You have to see that the Palace has not been good for her.” A kind of truth. The kind Ozai might stand._

_Ozai stepped forward, robes billowing around him. “You think wandering around the Earth Kingdom will improve her? I need her here, and she needs to be here. This is not a debate, I am her father.”_

_“She is not your property, brother!” Iroh snapped. “She spends her days wallowing in the dark and talking to nobody. Unless you will submit to the indignity of sending your daughter to an asylum, you must allow this voyage!”_

_Ozai’s breathing evened. “If she isn’t mine, do you think she’s yours? It’s not enough that you tried to steal Zuko, now you want to replace your dead boy with Azula?”_

_“What?” Iroh breathed, heart suddenly loud in his ears._

_“Oh, don’t pretend. I saw how you used to talk to the boy. Filling his head with dreams and lies. I might have struck the blow, but you killed him, sure as you killed Lu Ten.”_

_Iroh knew his brother was trying to make him angry. He knew it was working, too._

_“Ozai,” he said, as flat as he could. “We are leaving. You will not stop us, unless you want to fight me here and now. I hope to the Heavens that when we come back, you have had time to think. Work out what is important to you, brother.”_

_Iroh turned, and headed towards the port, half-expecting a bolt of lightning in the back. He wasn’t too worried- he had ways of dealing with that. But none came, and Iroh tried to take that as acceptance._


	5. I'll Take Your Brain To Another Dimension

“Miss? -Uh… Ma’am? ...Captain?”

Ty Lee blinked awake, blearily pulling herself up off the cold stone floor.

“Mmnot a captain,” she mumbled, blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

“Sorry… Lieutenant?” the guard tried, nervous eyes flicking from her to his coworker by his side, as Ty Lee yawned.

“Nope. Not a soldier. What time is it?”

“It’s… been ten minutes since you sat down. He’s moving again. Sorry.” He was apologising a lot. It went with the grey flickering around his aura.

“It’s okay.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she shuffled over to the centre of the cell, where the Avatar hung, suspended by his wrists. His hands had gone a funny colour, and his fingers were starting to twitch.

* * *

 

“Aang, you have to listen.”

* * *

 

She’d had to switch targets, who-knows how long ago. He’d started to bruise, which could make things weird. She couldn’t figure out if that was why he wasn’t staying knocked out as long, or if it was just his Avatarishness coming through.

One quick jab to the top of his spine, and the twitching stopped. Her two guards visibly relaxed.

* * *

 

“Oh not agai-”

* * *

 

“Thanks,” the apologetic guy said, and Ty Lee risked nodding at him as she slumped back to her corner.

It was awkward and felt a little rude to keep having to think of them as Apologetic Guy and Quiet Guy, and the polite thing to do would be to try and cheer up Apologetic Guy at least a little, but Ty Lee didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask his name. Quiet Guy looked a little shifty, and Ty Lee really didn’t want to be responsible for ending a man’s career -or worse- by smiling at him.

* * *

 

If Sokka believed in anything, he believed in blowhard Firebenders making self-important speeches about how great they were and how much more important their nation was than everyone else. Fortresses were only secure if you didn’t take all the guards away from their posts in order to explain your brilliance to them.

Sneering, as long as it was all in his head, was good, was fine, was a calming background noise as he tried to fold himself into a shadow, club in hand.

His plan was about as good as he could come up with, which was _not very_ . It was, at least, simple. All he had to do right now was corner some guard on their own and beat Aang’s location out of them. Easy.

To his right, he saw Katara’s outline in the torchlight, creeping along the side of the wall towards him. So she’d done her bit fine. His turn.

He set his shoulders, and crept towards the open door.

* * *

 

Katara was learning how to deal with terror. Learning to choke it, drown it in fire. While she was setting the blasting jelly by the gates, she’d distracted herself from imagining an arrow in the back with fantasies of lighting the fuse and watching this whole fortress collapse.

But that wasn’t the plan. One keg of blasting jelly, one long fuse, timed (hopefully) long enough for it to go off once they’d found Aang. A nice distraction, if it worked.

It’d work. It had to.

In another shadow, she saw Sokka move towards a side door into the pagoda, and she moved to follow.

* * *

 

“Aang. This is getting-”

* * *

Okay. One guard, all alone. Back to him, leaning against a wall, spear tucked under one arm. This was so easy it almost seemed like a trap.

Knuckles whitening on the hilt of his knife, he huffed out through his nose, once, and moved, wrenching the guard’s helmet back as his knife swung around to press against his neck and the guy was so much heavier than him in all that armour but he hadn’t come this far just to screw up now and as the helmet clattered to the ground with a crash that Sokka was pretty sure the Fire Lord must have heard he wrestled to get this guy under control so he could ask a few pertinent questions.

But he wasn’t complying, wasn’t staying still and by this point he was wearing Sokka like a backpack and Sokka could feel his fingers going numb on the knife and all of a sudden there was a jerk backwards, a sudden cessation of pressure, and when Sokka’s numb fingers slipped from the knife, suddenly slick, the blade stayed lodged in the man’s neck.

Sokka landed on his back in shock, but the guard didn’t have the decency to do the same, instead he lurched, stumbling towards the wall, dragging himself away from Sokka gurgling and choking and he was going to be sick but he had to do something and this wasn’t what he’d wanted it wasn’t what he’d meant but now he was here and he had to do _something_.

* * *

Katara was one bend in the corridor behind Sokka when she’d heard the crash of metal, but she forced herself not to speed up. Sokka had this.

Then there was another sound, less echoing, more weighty, and Katara found herself running around the bend straight into the figure of her brother, kneeling over the body of a guard, club held loosely in his hand, hand stained black in the dim torchlight.

“Sokka!” she hissed. “You okay?” He didn’t look hurt but he wasn’t moving, on his knees leaning over like he was going to puke and she couldn’t move fast enough.

His head jerked up as she approached, and for a second there was something wild in his eyes, something terrified. But he blinked, and it was gone, smoothed over. He leant over the body, and with a brief grunt of exertion, pulled his knife free, wiping it on the guard’s body.

“Yeah. He… I couldn’t get anything. And I think we’re running out of time before-”

* * *

The sound rolled throughout the fortress, sudden and booming as a thunderclap, and Ty Lee’s eyes slammed open.

Immediately, she looked over to where the Avatar was still suspended, helpless, paralysed. Totally immobile, like he’d been for the last… she didn’t know how long, any more. Okay, so if it wasn’t him-

The two guards were facing towards the door, pulling their spears up from the ground where they’d been sitting. Okay, so that _wasn’t_ something the Avatar had done, so… people were coming to rescue him? Exploding people? Or people with explosions, at least? That seemed totally plausible.

So, she reasoned, in a sleep-deprived kind of way, she should go check that out, right? Her- the Commander had said to guard the Avatar, hadn’t he? And stopping whoever it was that was blowing up the fortress in order to get him back probably counted, right? That _sounded_ right.

But first… she wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d last knocked the Avatar out, but better safe than sorry, right?

She turned from the door, and made her way, fist raised, towards the scrawny figure of the boy, suspended by wrists rubbed raw and bloody, chains taut, all that was keeping him from collapsing, and Ty Lee felt an unexpected pang of camaraderie.

Of course, her chains were less literal, except that one time they hadn’t been.

* * *

Running was their only chance now, running and hoping they were on the right track. There’d be time for blame later, time to learn from his stupid assumptions later, time to do anything but run and hope they found Aang before anyone found them because if they did Katara was going to die.

Priorities got simple when he’d screwed up this badly. But it almost seemed like luck was giving them a break so far because they hadn’t seen any-

A blur was barrelling down the corridor, a figure rushing impossibly fast and as Sokka took a two-handed grip on his club he gritted his teeth and grabbed his nerves and as the figure was almost on him he _swung_ -

The figure slid under his blow like she’d rehearsed it with him and suddenly his knee buckled as she was past him before he could blink and all he could do was shout uselessly.

“ _Katara!”_

* * *

Katara brandished the borrowed knife awkwardly, heart constricted in her chest as the girl advanced on her and suddenly. Stopped.

And straightened up, flicking her long braid back over her shoulder, and glanced behind her, to where Sokka was struggling to stay upright, back to Katara, looking her up and down. Katara set her face and tried to look fierce and dangerous and not like she was about to die.

She was wearing pink, which wasn’t quite the colour she’d so far associated with the Fire Nation, and- no weapon, so… firebender, right? Had to be. But she wasn’t pulling into a stance, wasn’t doing anything but stare at Katara like she was a creature she’d never seen before, like she couldn’t parse what was going on here, like, honestly, like Katara was probably looking at her.

“...Where are _you_ guys from?”

* * *

_“Finally.”_

* * *

She shouldn’t have asked that. She wasn’t supposed to talk to people at the best of times, talking to people she was _definitely_ meant to be fighting was probably even worse. But she needed to sleep, and when she didn’t get enough sleep her thoughts went weird places and she couldn’t always keep her tongue from getting away from her and she’d made this weird, hadn’t she?

“...Yeah? I mean, where’s Aang?” the girl replied, honest confusion morphing into gruff seriousness, and Ty Lee wondered how much of that she’d said out loud.

Aang. Aaang. So that was probably the Avatar’s name, right? It felt… she wasn’t sure how it felt, knowing his name. She hadn’t thought about him in those terms. (But she had. She wasn’t quite _that_ good at lying to herself.)

The boy had hobbled over to behind her, but wasn’t getting too close. So she didn’t have to do anything about that, just yet. In fact, she’d feel better if she didn’t have to do anything else at all. If she just stood here long enough, some other guards would show up and take these two away and she wouldn’t have to do too much of anything.

Ty Lee was way more comfortable with not doing anything than doing anything. Inaction could be explained in all kinds of ways.

Which was why, when the wind roared and wood split and tore and a clap of sound burst through the corridor loud enough to burst her eardrums and the floor was ripped apart, she didn’t try too hard to get out of the way, and accepted being flung out into the courtyard without any fuss.

You couldn’t commit treason by _not_ doing something, right?

* * *

Zhao could feel his temper boiling, felt the eyes of his men on the back of his neck, as he worked to keep his jaw from clenching.

The dawn was threatening to break over the trees, there was dew clinging to his shoulders, to his fists, to the miserable creature huddled in over herself in the dirt.

“I gave you one instruction,” he snarled. “One simple task. And instead I find you here, and your disobedience has allowed the Avatar to escape. Do you have anything to say for yourself? What _possible_ reason could you have for doing something so _stupid_?”

“I’m afraid that would be my fault, Commander,” a voice erupted from the pre-dawn light behind him, reminding Zhao he still had an audience. He whirled to face the stocky form of Colonel Shinu, a squad of Yu Yan at his back.

Zhao blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It was my fault. I ordered all hands to investigate the explosion. It appears she was caught up in that. I can only apologise for any harm that has come to your wife.”

Zhao’s nostrils flared. The sheer _audacity_ of this man, this narrow-minded defeatist, this interfering spear-carrier-

“A questionable tactic, Colonel. Perhaps even a foolish one.”

But Shinu just nodded, and Zhao could feel his teeth grinding together. “Quite. Almost as foolish as leaving the Fire Nation’s greatest enemy under the guard of two non-benders and a civilian. And your own wife too? Some people might call that nepotism, Commander. Or negligence.”

* * *

Shinu was wrestling to keep the grin off his face. _Anything_ was worth it to see Not-Admiral-Just-Yet Zhao having to try to hold on to his temper.

“Well, Commander, it has been a pleasure, but it looks like your quarry is escaping. I’ll let you get on.”

These days, he reflected, you had to take your victories where you could get them.

* * *

Sokka was being quiet, again, but he’d let her know if there was something wrong. She had to hope.

As Aang greedily drank from her waterskin, she bit her lip in worry, seeing her makeshift bandages on his wrists shift and pull, and for a moment she thought they might come off and start him bleeding again. It had been kind of alarming to see how much blood Aang had in him.

“Oh _wow_ that’s better,” he exhaled, finally, passing the empty skin back. “Anyway, like I was saying, Roku says we need to go to Crescent Island by the solstice. There’s something he needs to tell me.”

Sokka, mutely, reached into his pack, and pulled out a map, unfurling it onto the floor of Appa’s saddle.

Katara frowned. Crescent Island was _not_ her favourite destination. For one thing it was a long way south, and she and Sokka had done a pretty good job keeping Aang focussed on heading north so far. Seeing all that progress get wiped out was pretty disheartening. (Although look what happened when they rushed, she reminded herself, watching the bruise on Aang’s neck, purple and angry). Secondly-

“Well,” Sokka announced. “If we’ve got to go invade Fire Nation territory, at least your old self’s given us a couple weeks to figure out how.”

* * *

_Mai didn't know what it was with Fire Nation nobility and the desire to live at the top of enormous flights of stairs. Possibly it was some last remnant of the culture handed down by the Sun Warriors. Possibly it was just a superiority complex._

_Even out here, in the sticks, the local lord had his fortress-mansion looming over the village. It had taken her the best part of the morning to get to his front door. Still. She'd made it._

_Eyeing the ornate carving of a lotus flower that festooned the door, she raised the knocker, and let it fall, once._

_And waited. She was pretty good at that, if she did say so herself. Almost professionally, she thought, with a completely invisible smirk._

_Eventually, the door creaked open, and she was faced with an elderly man, ambling towards fat, who looked at her like she was expected, but he wasn't being paid enough to like it._

_"Yes?" he sighed._

_"I need a job."_


	6. She Don't Want Nobody Near

The downpour hammered and bounced against the slick metal of the ship, a thick curtain of water surging down the front of Iroh’s hood as he pushed his way out onto the deck. He’d forgotten the rainstorms that swept in off the sea in the Colonies sometimes, frigid and punishing. Nothing like the rains in the Outer Islands, more was the pity.

Nodding to the watchman huddled under the awning at the stern of the ship, he made his way towards the main deck, where blue fire sparked and hissed against the night.

“Niece,” he said, raising his voice against the rain, “you will catch a chill, out here in this weather.”

He hadn’t expected a response, and wasn’t disappointed. His niece was standing, arms outstretched, hair plastered to her skull, fire bursting from her fingertips and fizzing and hissing against the onslaught of the rain, whipped to and fro by the wind.

At least she wasn’t trying to open up her scar again.

It was a training exercise, normally, to try to balance fire under rain. To hold a flame in conditions like this was no small task, but Azula was maintaining two globes of fire the size of apples without appearing to notice. It should have been impressive. It _was_ impressive. Privately, Iroh wondered if he could match her in this.

She’d been made into an exemplary warrior. Hundreds of miles away from the front, without benefit of enemies, his niece had become as pointed and deadly as an arrow. Iroh wondered about that.

He’d had a front-row seat, in the last few years, to every bruise, to every broken bone. To everything his brother had been happy for people to see. Iroh wondered about that, too.

Her decline had been gradual, at first. Possibly nobody outside the family had noticed anything until she’d summarily fired all her servants and shut herself in her rooms. Ozai had been forced to go to her himself.

...After that, and what followed, Iroh had finally shaken off whatever solipsistic curse had taken him over, and put together this expedition in a panic. After years, he’d finally found a reason to hurry.

And now… here they were.

Sighing, he pulled his waxed cloak from around his shoulders, and draped it over Azula, taking care not to touch her.

“Azula,” he said, lightly, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “I was going to go into town to find some dinner. Would you perhaps accompany me?”

He’d kept a close eye on their finances. There was going to be a problem there, in the long term. But they were docked at a Colony port, now, so at least they would _take_ the money he had. And this was a justifiable expense.

After a moment, she shrugged, in acquiescence.

* * *

 

That _stupid_ scroll. Sokka’d known it was more trouble than it was worth. Sure, learning to waterbend was probably important, and if they were going to go charging into Fire Nation territory they needed every advantage they could get, but there had to be better ways than stealing from a bunch of hardened criminals who were happy to kidnap anyone they didn’t like and now they _had Katara_.

The ransom message had arrived in the late afternoon, just as Sokka was about to go check and see if Katara had cooled down yet. _Come to the ship an hour after sundown, and come prepared to give us our property back._

Aang had been ready to storm the ship, go in hard and fast and stupidly, but ( _this time_ ) he’d listened to Sokka, finally. It wasn’t worth it, it’d never been worth it, and he was so scared that something could happen.

They touched the bison down outside of town, just as the rain was really picking up. As Sokka stood, Aang caught his eye, looking wretched.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I guess I didn’t take you seriously when-”

Sokka held up a hand. “There’ll be time to talk about how right I am later. I want Katara to hear it too.”

The kid started to smile, and nodded. “Right. ...So, what’s the plan?”

Sokka shrugged. “We show up, show them the scroll, they show us Katara, we swap. Everyone goes their separate ways, we try to forget this ever happened.”

“Sounds simple enough to me. Let’s go.”

* * *

 

“Hmm… how about here?”

The lights of the inn were inviting in the gloom, and Iroh’s exaggerated hunger was beginning to be more than an act, but so far every place had failed to elicit a reaction from his niece. Well. This would have to do-

He turned, to realise he was alone.

“Oh _no_.”

* * *

 

“Aang,” Sokka said, quietly, suddenly slowing to a walk, “slow down a second.”

Aang blinked, but did so, stepping into an awning, to get out of the rain. “Sure,” he said. “But what’s up?”

Sokka handed the scroll over to him, thrusting it into Aang’s hands without looking. “Something’s come up. I gotta go take care of this.”

What? What? “ _What_?”

Sokka was suddenly looming over him, and it occurred to Aang for the fiftieth time that it was _really_ unfair he’d not hit his growth spurt yet, but Sokka had his arm around his shoulder and probably looked for all the world like he was just making friendly conversation, but his voice, close in Aang’s ear, was clipped, serious.

“Blue Fire is one alley back. I’m gonna go distract her. You get Katara out then go get _me_ out. Okay? _Okay_.”

Then, before Aang could object, Sokka had a palm flat on his shoulderblades and pushed Aang forward as he turned back at a run, swallowed up by the rain.

* * *

 

He’d been getting steadier, ever since- ever since. His hands were steady, his breathing even. The terrors were less unknown now. But speaking of unknowns.

She was standing in the alley, hunched and drawn into herself, cloak falling forward, held close to her body, the rain pattering across it. That firebender girl, the nightmare with the blue fire that was chasing them ( _them_ , not _him_ , Katara, that was just a… a coincidence or something) all the way across the world. But there was something he’d just realised, even as he stared her down, machete bared, humming taught as a bowstring.

She’d not done anything. She was just... waiting. For him to do something, for the next thought to enter her head, for the squad of soldiers to flank him, for _something_. She seemed to have forgotten what was going on.

And, if he could afford to spare a second to think about it, that was… what she’d done on Kyoshi, too. And in the village. She’d hit him with a boat, sure, but after that she’d just… wandered in, waited for him to throw his boomerang at her, and then very nearly murdered him. That had been the pattern.

Well. He didn’t have his boomerang, now. Because she’d stolen it. So that wasn’t on the table. And in the absence of boomerang violence, she didn’t seem to know what to do with herself. That made two of them.

“Hi?”

Later, he wouldn’t have an explanation for why he started talking, except that he couldn’t take the quiet anymore. He wasn’t in the habit of talking to firebenders; that was _specifically_ what he’d warned Aang not to do; he’d probably just reminded her where she was, maybe she’d just been thinking about getting dinner or something and now he’d brought her back, this was how he was going to die, damp and hypocritical, Gran-Gran was going to be _so_ disappointed-

“...Hi.”

He almost didn’t hear it over the wind and rain, a small sardonic drawl, her head cocked, scar twisting in a raised eyebrow. An actual response. A monosyllabic dialogue, but a dialogue nonetheless.

Sokka titled his head, carefully. There was something he could stand to know, if he was going to get out of this situation without getting fireballed to death.

“...Who _are_ you?”

It was like sparking kindling. The girl drew herself up to her full height, spine stiffening, and glared imperiously at him down the bridge of her nose. Since they were the same height, she had to lean back quite a way to do it.

“My name is Princess Azula, only child of Fire Lord Ozai, and heir to the throne. You may kneel now.”

“...Yeah, no.” Princess? That was a thing the Northern Tribes had, right? So the Fire Nation had a same kind of system as the sister tribes, which was weird, but also he was in the presence of royalty, but also evil Fire Nation royalty, so why was she by herself in an alley in the Colonies getting rained on instead of sitting in a palace eating fruits? Was she just making stuff up?

“Who are _you?_ ”

Oh no okay not playing, thank you, he absolutely didn’t need to be giving out any information to what was _the enemy_ -

“Sokka! We are _leaving!”_

Oh he _hated_ the universe.

* * *

 

So it turned out that you couldn’t trust pirates! Aang was having an _extremely_ disappointing day.

* * *

 

The ropes around her wrists burned and cut into her skin, a constant irritation as she ran, trying to follow Aang as he retraced his steps, caught between an Avatar that couldn’t remember which alley her idiot brother had ducked into and a mob of pirates that were _not_ happy with how negotiations had broken down.

The rain was taunting her. If only she could move her hands, she could _do_ something with that.

An arrow whizzed and clattered, skimming off the street and shattering at her feet, and she picked up the pace just in time to collide with her brother charging out of a side street, slipping on the wet paving stones and knocking both of them sprawling.

“Katara!” he gasped, pulling himself up, and reaching for her. Silently, she proffered her bound hands. With a nod, he raised his machete, and sawed through the ropes, head facing over his shoulder the whole time.

“ _Right_ ,” she announced, rotating life back into her wrists.

“Katara we have to leave _right now_ -” Sokka started to say, before the mob was on top of them.

* * *

 

A melee was _not_ the ideal time to try out a new move, as it turned out. In the stories Dad used to tell, before the Fire Nation had attacked, heroes had fought monsters and spirits in grand duels, and nobody had ever had to contend with the fact that while she was backing up in the face of three pirates she was pretty sure there was someone behind her and she wasn’t sure she was going to be quick enough to stop them but-

But the rain coalesced around her hands just like the scroll showed and her feet slid into place on flagstones that were suddenly dry and she turned and flung a water whip like she’d been doing it all her life. It scythed through the air in a sweeping arc, and with a thrill she watched it collide with the first guy- a growling, heavyset man who she vaguely remembered from her brief time in their company- and send him tumbling backwards into his two friends, slamming them hard onto the ground, and she grabbed the whip and kept it spinning, twisting her body around until it arced behind her.

And the figure emerging from the alley sailed over it like it was nothing, leaping gracefully over its trajectory and letting it dash itself to pieces on the wall behind her, hitting the ground without slowing barreling right for her and Katara didn’t have time to react to do anything and suddenly blue light flared illuminating a long red scar and the firebender almost knocked Katara over, shoulder slamming into her as she launched herself on the hapless pirate that had been trying to stand up again.

Katara blinked.

The firebender had landed on the man’s throat knee-first, both hands trailing fire hot enough to char the rain, flinging one bolt at the chest of another man, grabbing the third’s wrist with a hand that was still wreathed in fire, the screeches of pain mingling with the smell of burnt hair.

“ _What._ ” She opined.

The firebender sprang to her feet, landing both feet on the chest of the hapless first guy, and, cloak fluttering behind her like a pennant, hurled herself at another crewman, who was so engrossed in trying to pin down Aang with a net he never even saw her coming. Katara might have felt sorry for him, had she not been forced, over the course of the afternoon, to listen to him talk.

Suddenly she felt a hand grab hers, pulling her away from the show that was the blue firebender disassembling the pirate crew with disturbing enthusiasm.

“Don’t question it,” Sokka said, eerily calm. “there’ll be time for that later. For now, run away.”

That sounded like a plan.

* * *

 

The first clue had been all the screaming. The second had been a greasy little fellow running for his life, colliding straight into Iroh as he ran towards the source of the noise. By that point, all he had to do was follow the smell of smoke.

He burst out of the nest of narrow streets onto the dock again. The rain was starting to clear as he emerged into the open sky and his eyes blurred through the smoke in the air.

It had been a ship, this pyre blazing orange, belching smoke into the air. His attention was focused on his niece dreamily surveying the devastation, bodies scattered around her on the dock, living or dead, Iroh didn’t really care. The crew, presumably. Azula had her back to him, staring at the remains of the ship, apparently transfixed, but turned, dreamily, as he approached.

“Ah, Uncle!” she exclaimed, and Iroh had to smother a wince. She was swinging upwards again. He’d been afraid of that.

Still, she at least talked when she was like this.

“Niece! You really should tell me before you run off. You gave me quite a fright!”

Behind her, with a groan, the mast of the ship twisted and slammed through the burning remains of the deck. Azula’s grin threatened to split her head in two.

“We have a course, Uncle,” she announced, wide-eyed. “They got away before I worked it out.”

Iroh blinked. “Oh?” For all that he had no idea what she was talking about, at least this _sounded_ like progress, but he’d been disappointed before. “And what course might that be?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Uncle? We’re going to find the Avatar.”

... And really, what was Iroh supposed to say to that?


	7. But She Can't Get Away From That

Not for the first time, though he would have happily eaten glowing coals before admitting it, Commander Zhao felt underequipped for the situation. Everything he’d ever learned about warfare had only applied to opponents terrestrial or nautical.

A blockade was a tedious thing to organise at the best of times, and it had taken a lot of quick letter-writing on his part, and he was only _mostly_ sure it would work at all.

Still. At least the boy wasn’t hard to track- making a direct line straight for the Fire Nation was so brazen Zhao almost approved- _that_ had never been the problem. The problem was that catapults were only so effective at shooting moving targets even when the targets weren’t dots in the sky.

 _Still_ , he ruminated, stepping out into the chill of the morning, breathing deep of the rising sun, pulling his cloak around him as to his left and to his right, the flotilla assembled, _that’s why you get a lot of them._

* * *

Jee was beginning to resent how he was being used. He owed the General his life, his career, the health of his family, of course, but this… he knew when his loyalty was being exploited. That was the thing about loyalty, of course. He knew he was being taken advantage of, but that was what he’d signed up for.

Jee glowered, shifting his weight deliberately. He did _not_ enjoy playing the part of a peacemaker.

“We’re running low on fuel,” Niu grumbled, shovelling coal into the mouth of the engine. “Twice now we’ve docked, and twice I’ve been _assured_ we were stopping to pick up coal, and yet we’ve not restocked since we left Fire Nation waters for reasons I _cannot_ understand. Now she’s got us at full speed ahead out towards the archipelago, due west, nothing between the Outer Islands and us but hundreds of miles of open ocean? First storm would becalm us!”

Jee waited. Niu was a small man, wiry, but no firebender. The threat was minimal, and now was not the time to be pulling rank.

Niu deflated, nervous in the face of Jee’s control of his temper. “I’m not disloyal,” he clarified. “I just want to know there’s a plan.”

Jee straightened his spine, and stared at a point just slightly behind Niu’s ear.

“There’s a plan. Now get back to work.”

* * *

The ship had stopped, had been stopped for _hours_ , but that didn’t make any sense- she couldn’t tell much, from her cabin, but she knew what it sounded like when the ship was at port, and this wasn’t it. Too many boots echoing through the halls, too little singing.

So they’d dropped anchor at sea, for... reasons.

She flopped back on the narrow bed that was hers, now. If Zhao thought he was punishing her… well, she wasn’t going to complain about being kicked out of their shared quarters. This tiny, cramped, lightless cabin was the first privacy she’d had in years.

If she’d just had a window, she’d be in the lap of luxury.

Exhaling hard, she looked at the ceiling, and thought about flying.

* * *

“Okay, so explain this to me again. She _didn’t_ attack you.”

“Correct.”

“She called herself Princess Azula.”

“Also correct.”

“And _then_ she actively helped Katara fight off the pirates, and also me, although no offense Katara you probably needed the help more.”

“ _Also_ correct, your powers of remembering stuff that happened last night are working really well today.”

“So why is she chasing us?”

Sokka looked over the side of the saddle, down to the ocean where a grey line that was Azula’s ship could be seen, determinedly in pursuit, and shrugged, turning back to Aang.

“Honestly your guess is as good as mine. Maybe she’s decided to give me my boomerang back?”

“Guys?” Katara’s voice, from her seat at the reins, was serious. “We’ve got a problem.”

* * *

 

“Target in sight!”

Zhao smiled to himself as the message went up all around him, relayed by flag to all the ships in the blockade, every soul waiting on _him_ to give the order, tension humming in the air.

Sometimes, he really did love his job.

“Launch!”

* * *

 

There was a sound, loud even through layers of iron floors, of tension being released, of boulders whistling through the air, of dull splashes in the ocean.

Belatedly, Ty Lee realised why the ship had stopped. It had to be the Avatar and his two friends, right? That was Zhao’s newest obsession. They were in the area, and now Zhao was trying to hit them with catapults. That sounded like him.

She still felt kind of bad about the kid, how she’d treated him back in the fortress. She’d been doing as she’d been told, but she couldn’t find a lot of comfort in the excuse. People doing what they’d been told had a lot to do with how she wound up married.

Still, even if Zhao did manage to capture him and his two friends again, they probably didn’t have too much to worry about. As far as Ty Lee could tell, Zhao’s new favourite method for dealing with problems was to lock them in small rooms and then try to forget about them. There were worse things he could do. Had done.

She was  _so_ glad that she was locked in this tiny cabin right now.

* * *

 

Azula’s fingers tightened on the spyglass, scanning the blockade ahead, the sky above, the thick black trails of smoke carving the morning sky into thin strips, and her jaw worked angrily.

“They’re firing on him, they’re _firing_ on him, this isn’t right it’s not part of the plan _flank speed!”_ she bellowed, turning to face Jee, slapping the spyglass to his chest. Her eyes were wide and furious and it took everything in Jee’s spine not to step backwards in the face of her incomprehensible rage.

Jee knew when his loyalty was being taken for granted, and he knew what it looked like when someone should not be making decisions. But Iroh was standing beside him, and his General hadn’t said anything, and surely he _would_ say something, if he needed to. Surely this couldn’t be what it looked like.

He turned to the aft, cupped his hands, and shouted. “Flank speed!”

As the ship lurched forward, he closed his eyes, just for a moment.

* * *

 

The Avatar was _extremely_ difficult to hit, it turned out. This wasn’t a problem, not yet. They still had time-

“Commander! Ship approaching!”

Zhao frowned, as he pulled the spyglass to his face, looking in the direction of the Colony shores, where his Lieutenant had pointed. Surely the Earth Kingdom Navy couldn’t be choosing _now_ to start being relevant again…

He twisted the spyglass, and the lens focused, until the figure standing at the prow of the ship was unmistakable.

_What?_

Turning, he grabbed the Lieutenant by the scruff of his neck. The man whimpered when he was wrenched up, but Zhao had never cared about that kind of thing and didn’t have time to start now.

“New orders! I want all weapons fired on that ship! I want her sunk before she gets _close_ to us! Do you understand? Do you?”

The Lieutenant nodded, wide-eyed, face now inches from Zhao’s own. “Yessir, but-”

“Get it _done_ , Lieutenant. _Azula_ is on that ship!”

 _That_ spurred the man into action, _finally_ , finally he understood not to _question_ him.

“Yessir,” he saluted, smartly, and then he was gone to do his job. And Zhao could get his breathing under control.

Azula. What was she _doing_ here? Never mind that, in the middle of crisis there was always opportunity. If he could get that ship sunk, all his troubles would be over.

* * *

 

When the boulders had started to rain down around them, she’d laughed, loud and sincere and delighted, standing at the prow of the ship, arms outstretched, accepting the calamity around them. They were still too far away to be at all accurate, but twenty battleships only had to be inaccurate for so long and they were still running the blockade at full speed and every mistake Jee had made in the past twenty-four hours had led up to this.

Without warning, the ship tilted, beginning to turn north, and Jee felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

He was halfway across the deck, slipping and stumbling over the cacophony, before he realised he was moving. Six heartbeats before he was flying up the stairs and tackling the helmsman to the deck before he could kill them all.

He leaned in close to be heard over the pounding of boulders on the sea, of fireballs screaming through the air.

“You turn this ship, you expose our flank now, we sink,” he growled. “The only way out is through.”

The helmsman was an old man, no match for Jee, but he struggled against his grip like a mad thing, eyes wide and terrified. From the floor, he shrieked the question Jee wished he didn’t have the answer to.

“They’re shooting at us, why are they _shooting_ at us?”

* * *

 

“...Why aren’t they shooting at us?”

Sokka didn’t answer, transfixed by the spectacle unfolding far below. Aang dared to join him, leaning over Appa’s flank. The small ship, charging the blockade, fire raining down all around. It was… sad. There was only one way that was going to end, and he didn't know that he had the stomach to watch it.

Aang turned away, but noted out of the corner of his eye, Sokka, transfixed, jaw set, eyes hard, couldn’t seem to tear himself away from the spectacle.

* * *

 

Jee hauled himself to his feet; the insensible helmsman he left on the floor. With a wrench, he grabbed the steering handle and heaved, pushing the ship’s nose back towards the gap between two battleships, foam gushing over the side of the ship, smoke stinging his eyes, and to his horror he saw Princess Azula leap lightly upwards to land on the railing of the prow, arms splayed, head thrown back in wild and reckless joy.

As the stones plummeted from the sky towards them, Jee saw her fingers start trailing sparks, then the world went blinding white.

* * *

It was kind of weird, watching lightning from above. 

Sokka made a weird choked sound and lurched backwards as lighting shot from the ship, blasting a boulder apart as it flew towards them, sending rock splintering into the water.  _That_ was something Aang hadn't counted on. Maybe this Princess Azula had a plan after all!

“What was _that?”_ Sokka gasped, transfixed.

In spite of himself, Aang grinned. It was pretty great when he got to be the urbane guy that had been all around the world and impressed everyone with all the things he’d seen.

“Oh that,” he yawned, deliberately unimpressed. “That’s lightningbending. It’s a firebender trick. Not a lot of them can do that!”

* * *

 

Jee didn’t consider himself a pious man, but a desperate prayer to anyone stuck in his throat as he watched Azula bat another shot out of the sky, carefree and terrifying, and he dared to think, just for a second, that she might have a plan after all.

But they were getting closer, now, to the wall of iron, and the volleys were coming quicker, and the boat was rocking side to side with every storm of rock, and Azula was slapping one after another out of the sky but soon it wouldn’t matter-

He looked up, past the trails of black smoke, to a small white blur, stark against what was left of the blue sky, heading due west, and there was a tightness in his chest he couldn’t explain.

Then the boulder punched through the deck, knocking him sprawling, hard on the iron, and as he stumbled to his feet another smashed almost where the first had hit throwing him forwards as the ship twisted and screeched and snapped in two and the last thing he saw before the sea rushed to claim him was Princess Azula howling in frustration as she was flung into the dark and churning water.

* * *

 

It wasn’t until the two halves of the ship had finally sunk beneath the waves that Commander Zhao allowed himself to relax.

Well. He’d secured that promotion with _this_ morning’s work. This had turned out to be an _exceptional_ bit of improvisation. This was what it meant to see chances where other people saw disaster, this was-

“Commander?” his Lieutenant interrupted, cautiously. “The Avatar’s escaping.”

What? Oh, right. The Avatar.

Well, he supposed he should probably go deal with that, too.

* * *

 

Sokka slumped back in the saddle as the blockade retreated into the distance. Aang didn’t know what was going through his head- he was still trying to work Sokka out, honestly- but he thought that he looked… disappointed? Like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, full of frustrated energy with nowhere to let it go.

Aang got that.

“ _So_ ,” he exhaled, all in a rush. “I guess I’m not getting my boomerang back.”

* * *

 

_The bird had arrived three hours ago, half-dead from the cold. Iroh had been fortunate that nobody else had been around when he’d got the message. His reaction would have been… hard to explain._

_He’d destroyed the note, obviously. Sent the bird back with no message._

_He should have expected this. He should have considered the possibility that this would be how Ozai retaliated._

_But there would be time to regret later. For now, he had to tell his niece. The crew did not need to know, but she did. This was a family matter._

* * *

_He knocked on her door, and waited._

_“Enter,” a voice echoed from inside, curt and imperious._

_He steeled himself, and pushed the door inwards, stepping through, into the gloom. She was sitting, he noted, as his eyes grew used to the half-light, cross-legged, back to him, meditating, or trying to. In front of her, a row of candles was lit, each flame burning blue, obedient to her will._

_“Niece, I… received a message, this morning.”_

_That in itself wasn’t so unusual. He often shared with her details of the messages he received from the Order. So far, she hadn’t questioned it._

_“...Well?” she prompted, and he realised he had stopped. Breathing deep, he took the plunge._

_“Azula, niece… there is news from the Caldera. We have been.... We have been declared enemies of the Fire Nation.”_

_The candles snuffed out instantly, and the room was plunged into darkness. Iroh held his breath._

_“...What do you mean?”  Her voice was ragged, shaking. But she’d asked him to continue._

_“An order has been sent to every ranking officer outside of the home shores. We are to be killed on sight.” His heart was loud in his chest, and he was beginning to realise what a mistake he’d made._

_“...Who gave the order?”_

_Iroh flinched, eyes screwed up. She knew. They both knew. Was this why he’d done it? One last petty act of violence, flung across the world? One last way to hurt her? Did anything beyond spite drive his brother any more?_

_“Who?” she repeated, louder, harsher._

_“The order was signed by your father,” he answered, flatly, blandly. It wasn’t like there was anything more he could say wrong, any way he could make this right any more._

_There was a moment of breathless silence, then a wretched noise, a racking sob tearing through his niece, and he stepped forward, unthinking._

_The arc of fire would have taken his head off if he hadn’t stopped short in time._

_“Get out!” she howled, another plume of blue fire streaking towards him as he backed up, palms outstretched, nearly tripping on the lip of the door as he stepped backwards into the hall, pulling the door closed as he went._

_Well._

_He didn’t know what he'd expected._


	8. My Sunny Side Has Up And Died

The smell of black powder lingered in the air, two streets over someone was banging a drum, she’d been almost knocked over three times by carts laden with hot food, and Ty Lee was in her element.

She had always liked the Fire Days Festival. It didn’t have the seriousness and ceremony of the Solstices, or the formality of the New Year, it was just _fun_. Food and fireworks and other great things beginning with F. Frolicking? Maybe not, but whatever. Fun was important, in Ty Lee’s opinion.

Even the puppets would probably be fun if Ty Lee hadn’t met who they were supposed to be about. Despite not starting with an F.

Well. Filicide? That sort of worked.

Ty Lee was allowed to think treasonous, right? It was saying it that was the problem.

The two guards hovering nervously at her shoulders like she might vanish if she wasn’t stuck between them at all times would probably disagree with that, though.

The roar of the crowd all around her was soothing and exhilarating all at once, which was a contradiction but Ty Lee had never cared about those. She loved the warmth of torchlight against the night sky, warm orange glows obliterating the stars and making a smooth black velvet out of the sky.

She’d wanted to live here, once, in this moment. She almost had. She would’ve, if it hadn’t been for Azula.

Azula was dead. Zhao had made sure she knew that. He’d been so _happy_ when he got his promotion.

Normally Ty Lee liked it when people were happy. How could she not? There was a vicarious little thrill from watching someone let their hair down, even for just as long as it took to smile.

She didn’t know how Zhao made glee look so _ugly_. So-

_No._ She shook her head like a dog clearing water. She’d come to the festival- she’d _asked Zhao’s permission_ to go to the festival, and he’d been distracted enough by his career that he’d _agreed-_ to have a good time and distract herself and she refused to think about Zhao any more and she looked up and a scrap of blue whirled before her eyes and where’d she seen _that_ before?

She looked left, looked right, paying some attention to her guards for the first time. They were both men. Perfect.

“Okay I’ve got to go to the bathroom, meet you back here, okay? Bye,” she said, with a wave, and vanished into the crowd, pretending not to hear any raised concerns.

If she wanted a distraction, well. That looked like one.

* * *

“Hey. Heeey. _Easy._ Put the knife away?”

The figure that had her cornered was trying to soothe her. Katara was not good at being soothed. Around them, above them, in buildings and in the streets, the festival continued, but here, away from the main square, the road was empty. There wasn’t anything to buy or watch, here.

Katara silently cursed her need to go to the bathroom. She’d thought it wasn’t a big risk, even after enduring Sokka’s impromptu lecture on that exact subject. In her defense she’d definitely stopped listening before he’d got to the importance of not being ambushed on the way back from the toilets.

Her waterbending was coming along in leaps and bounds, but right now it lacked the surety of a bladed edge. Katara shifted, trying not to let the knife drop as she looked the girl up and down, looking as threatening as she could. The girl didn’t have the decency to look even a little threatened, and instead just leant up against the wall, cool as you please.

She was pretty. She was _pretty terrifying._ Katara had only really noticed that second point, when she’d charged at them in Pohai Fortress.

“What do you want?” she snarled, in the face of a complete lack of aggression. The girl shrugged.

“I dunno. You enjoying the festival?”

“I... “ Katara blinked, and the knife sagged, just for a moment. “Yes? Kind of? The food is weird. I ate a fruit that numbed my whole mouth, but- what _are_ you? You don’t look like any Fire Nation soldier I’ve ever seen.”

For the first time, the girl showed a flicker of something that wasn’t cheerful curiosity. “Because I’m not a soldier? Why does everyone _assume_ that?”

An eyebrow slid upward, a tic she’d got from Sokka, or he’d got from her. “Because last time I saw you you were attacking my brother in the middle of a Fire Nation fortress?”

There, again, that shadow crossed her face, small but certain. “That’s… my husband’s a soldier. He wants to keep me close by.”

Oh. Well that made sense, as far as it went.

The girl blinked, and looked back up, grey eyes glinting in the dim light of a thousand candles. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” she announced, and the knife was back up, Katara trying to act like it hadn’t even drifted.

“What _did_ you want to talk about?” Katara asked, even as she tried to figure out how she was going to run. The girl was _fast,_ she’d seen that tonight, and could get up onto the rooftops almost as easily as Aang could, so-

“Flying!” the girl announced, with a sudden lightness that nearly jolted Katara off her feet. “What’s it like?”

“...What?”

She shrugged. “I mean, seems to me nobody’s been flying in a hundred years. It looks wonderful.”

Katara supposed that sounded reasonable. “It’s… it’s great.” Okay, she could do better than that. “It’s so… _calm,_ up there. If you get up too high it starts to get cold, but it feels really _safe_ up there, in a way I didn’t think we could be anywhere on the ground. The way Appa bends the wind, there’s a little corner right on the saddle that’s always calm. It’s… comfy?”

The girl looked like she was paying more attention than she’d meant to.

“...Huh.” she said, after a while, and misery rolled off her in waves in a way Katara hadn’t let herself notice before.

Katara made a decision, the kind of decision Sokka insisted was going to turn his hair white before summer. She put the knife away.

* * *

They were sitting, now. Ty Lee hadn’t really meant them to, she’d just ambled over towards the lip of a stone planting trough, and when she’d flopped down onto it the girl had taken the opportunity to do the same. Ty Lee was finding she didn’t mind that at _all_.

“I’ve got sisters,” she replied, in response to her last question. “A _lot_ of sisters, back home in the Caldera.” She tried to avoid thinking about them, even as much as she’d resented them when they were around. “What about you?” she continued, before she remembered why that might not be such a safe topic of conversation.

But the girl just smiled, and Ty Lee, in a way she also didn’t think too hard about, could get used to seeing that.

“Just my brother,” she responded. “You’ve met.”

Ty Lee’s brow wrinkled. She had?

“You punched him in the leg.”

Oh! Oh yeah, she had.

“Are you the oldest, then?” she asked, and Ty Lee blinked at the suddenly pointed nature of the question.

“No?” she replied, cautiously, in case it was a trap.

Which it was. “But you’re married.”

“Yeah,” she replied, as blankly as possible. But the girl leaned forward, and there was a spark in her eyes that Ty Lee was having trouble ignoring, and her mouth was set into a thin line.

“I don’t know much about how the Fire Nation works,” she admitted, like it was a point of pride. “But is it normal to get married so young? I know Sokka’s technically an adult now, although he only passed the ceremony about a week ago, and if the Tribe was in better shape he might be starting looking to get married soon-ish, but he’s older than me and I’m _pretty_ sure he’s older than you?” Too late, the girl seemed to realise Ty Lee was backing up in the face of her interrogation, and relented a little, shuffling backwards in a way that calmed Ty Lee down a little.

“Why do you care?” she asked, stalling for time more than anything, but the girl shrugged.

“I don’t know much about the Fire Nation.” Which was a weird reason, but Ty Lee’d carried this inside her for so long and now someone was _asking_ and she couldn’t hold the tension back any longer or she'd burst.

“It was… political.” A nice, clean word for it. A word that set all the others tumbling out of her in an avalanche. “I, um, he asked for me because the connections would help his career. And I guess they did! He’s an admiral, now. I wasn’t the oldest but he wanted me because at school I was- I was friends with someone important, and he thought maybe he could use that. My parents- they- they-” the words wouldn’t come. Her parents were a pair of shadows, now, a slim man in a high-backed chair by the fire, a tall woman with her hands in her sleeves, silhouetted in the doorway as she was dragged away. The last time she’d seen them. They hadn’t come to her wedding, for obvious reasons. “Then he... learned I could fight and he thought he could use that, too, so… here I am.”

She was looking at her hands, twisted in her lap, dully, by the end. Suddenly, brown fingers laid over hers, and she looked up at the girl and she was _crying,_ big fat silent tears shining in the corners of her blue eyes, but her breathing was heavy and she looked _furious_ and Ty Lee wanted to flinch or recoil but she couldn’t move, paralysed in the gaze of this strange girl who looked like she wanted to kill someone.

“Come with us,” she said, fierce and insistent, and for a second Ty Lee couldn’t breathe.

But the shadows dropped around her, her sisters, safe in the Caldera. She knew what happened to the families of traitors, or, rather, she very specifically _didn’t._ Perhaps her family’s money might protect them, but it might not. Ozai had only gotten worse as the years went by, by all accounts.

And she thought, too, of what Zhao would do if he caught her.

“You’re so nice,” she said, softly.

_Nice._ It sounded stupid, trite, even as it left her lips. But it was true. There had been a real lack of nice in Ty Lee’s life, these past few years.

The explosion was dull, a thudding boom somewhere from the direction of the main square, and as the girl blinked in sudden surprise Ty Lee knew this little truce had to end.

But not just yet. Faster than thought, faster than all the reasons why she shouldn’t, _couldn’t,_ she leant forward and kissed the girl, feather-light, lips opening in soft surprise, feeling breath mingling, and before she could be rejected, she pulled back.

“Good luck,” she breathed, staring at the cobbles, and then she was gone, not daring to look back.

* * *

Sokka waited until Aang was safely asleep before turning back from the reins to look at his sister.

“Hey,” he said, softly, and she looked up from her sewing, which was probably for the best. The way she’d been attacking it, it was only a matter of time before she stabbed herself in the hand. Sokka preferred his family not bleeding, if at all possible.

Which neatly led him to this. Breaking the unspoken truce he’d agreed with his sister: I Won’t Ask What’s Wrong With You If You Don’t Ask What’s Wrong With Me. it’d probably outlived its usefulness anyway. “What’s going on?”

Katara blinked, deliberately confused or maybe just regular confused. “I’m trying to fix this shirt?”

Sokka exhaled through his nose. “I meant earlier. At Jeong-Jeong’s camp.” No, wait, too many things had happened at Jeong-Jeong’s camp, he had to be more specific. “Not the healing thing, or the thing where Aang set you on fire like a careless idiot-”

“-Sokka I think you’re angrier about that than I am.”

“Maybe. But I’m talking about you trying to jump at that Zhao guy.” He’d seen Katara get mad before. He’d never seen Katara be _stupid_ like that, and he had to understand it if he was going to stop it happening again. “That was weird.”

Katara started to bristle. “He’s trying to capture Aang, and probably kill us. We have to stop him.”

“We’ve stopped him pretty effectively by getting away every time he’s showed up. Why’re you suddenly trying to knife the guy rather than run away? Because this seems new.”

She stopped, and sighed. “...You’re right. I… at the festival, I… met his wife.”

Sokka blinked. Out of everything he might have expected, that wasn’t one of them. “You… _what?_ What does that mean? You met some snooty Fire Nation aristocrat lady?”

Katara shook her head. “Sokka, you remember that girl at Pohai Fortress?”

“The one who punched me in the leg then started chatting at you?” he replied, mind racing ahead of the conversation, oh _no…_

“That’s _her_ ,” Katara replied, grimly.

“But she’s like… _your_ age. Okay, that’s gross, but I don’t see-”

Katara shook her head, and looked out over the blanket of clouds. “When I ran into her at the festival, I- I don’t know, she seemed so sad. I want to help her.”

Sokka rubbed the bridge of his nose. “By making her a widow?”

“It’d be a start. You saw that guy.”

Sokka couldn’t disagree. He had, in fact, saw that guy. Admiral Zhao had given him the creeps even before this conversation had started. And Katara was worse than he was about not getting involved with awful people causing awful problems for people that weren’t directly related to the whole save-the-world thing.

“Point.”

Another point: he knew his sister. Katara got invested in people. It’d happened with Haru. It’d happened with those idiots crossing the Great Divide. It’d happened with _Aang._  It’d happen with a hundred other people before the Spring, probably. Katara had the absolutely terrifying ability to decide to change the world for someone she’d met that morning.

It’d happened with _Jet_. But Sokka knew she wouldn’t have learned from that, or at least not learned what Sokka had learned, which was: the world was full of monsters, and not all of them breathed fire. Katara had learned that even Fire Nation people could be victims too, which, yes, was _technically_ a conclusion Sokka had come to from that whole nightmare incident, but still.

Sokka trusted three people in the world, and Aang wasn’t one of them just yet. Katara trusted anyone she’d vetted with a three-minute conversation. Between the two of them, they might just make a normal human being.

He knew he couldn’t stop her on this new crusade, even if he’d wanted to. So that was that, then. He relaxed. It was always a relief to know there was nothing he could do.

“This is just the penguin-seal chicks thing all over again, isn’t it?”

Katara looked scandalised. “I was _six._ When are you going to let that go?”

“When my left middle toe bends properly again,” Sokka replied, primly, as he turned back to face the north.


	9. I Should Have Got Up To Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings updated, as of this chapter!

Mai pushed her broom across the immaculate floor as her boss had his breakfast. He got a lot of mail, and liked to read it with a cup of tea. He read the interesting bits out loud, which was convenient, as it saved her the trouble of learning to pick locks.

“Admiral Zhao’s armada has begun its siege of the Northern Water Tribes. Barring anything unexpected from the Avatar, who has apparently taken refuge in the city, the attack is expected to be decisive. Zhao expects to proclaim victory before the end of the week.”

He turned to his next little message, and paused, delivering his second piece of news with a degree of seriousness that had been entirely absent when he’d been discussing the imminent annihilation of a sovereign nation.

“Princess Azula has been killed, or so the Navy is reporting.”

Mai didn’t miss a beat. “A just reward for traitors to the Fire Nation.”

Master Piandao set his cup down with deliberate care, frowned slightly to himself, and fixed her with a tired look. “Mai. I killed one hundred firebenders rather than go back to the military.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I am the most wanted man on Fire Nation shores.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I know you know this.”

“Yes, Master.”

“So I know you know you don’t need to keep acting like the Minister for Propaganda in my own home.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Because, and I honestly don’t know if this matters to you at all, I find it _exhausting.”_

“Yes, Master.”

“As long as we’re clear.”

Master Piandao was ... not what she’d expected, when she’d gone to him for employment. What she _had_ expected wasn’t totally clear, but if she’d been pressed, she might have admitted to anticipating a dead-eyed sociopath, or an open revolutionary full of plots. What she’d been confronted with was a slightly effete weirdo who complained of headaches a lot and didn’t do much of anything, except the occasional bout of calligraphy. Though to be fair apparently the headaches thing was only when he talked to her for too long, and to be much fairer than Mai had ever been in her life she deliberately wound him up for no reason other than to stave off boredom.

She couldn’t help it, although honestly she’d never tried to. He was just so… _safe._ There was no menace in the man at all. She’d never even seen him pick up a sword. Maybe the real Master Piandao had been dead for years, or was an urban legend or a regular legend or a mass hallucination, and this guy was just taking advantage of a terrifying reputation. Mai could live with that. He at least made sure she kept up with world events, and she’d been careful to never ask how he knew the things he did.

Speaking of, Azula was dead, was she? Mai would reserve judgement until she’d seen a body, and even then she’d only be moved to a solid maybe.

The Zhao thing was frankly a lot more of a concern, because while nobody deserved things to be going their way less than Fire Lord Ozai, Admiral Zhao was a close second, as far as Mai was concerned.

She didn’t regret leaving, after Zuko’s fateful Agni Kai, but she occasionally wondered if she should, if only for Ty Lee’s sake.

* * *

Yue knew that her life was measured in heartbeats. Had known for so long she didn’t even always recognise the odd tightness when it twisted in her chest for what it was, what choked her breathless in the dark when she couldn’t help but think of all the things she’d never do.

So it hadn’t mattered much to her when her betrothal had been decided. And probably she should hate Sokka for making her realise, making her notice how desperately, smotheringly unfair it was, how miserably unhappy she was-

-But he was so insistent and vital and trying so hard to impress her, like her opinion mattered, like _she_ \- a girl that did nothing but stay in her room every second she wasn’t reciting lines other people had written for her- was someone _he_ had to impress.

He’d shown her the sky and he’d made her laugh and she wanted to kiss him and he didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know she mustn’t think what he was planting in her brain when he showed her the horizon and offhandedly insinuated how easy it was to leave.

She’d almost believed him, before that horizon had suddenly been ringed in iron.

* * *

“I’ll go.”

When the plan was announced, and volunteers were asked for, she didn’t hesitate, shooting to her feet, _demanding_ they recognise her, but she knew it was pointless the second the stunned silence fell across the hall. Of course. Of _course._

She’d had to fight this whole city from the moment she’d arrived, snap and bite and claw every shred of the respect she _knew_ she’d earned, that had been handed to Aang and Sokka without a thought, and she _knew_ nobody in this city was going to stand up for her, and Master Pakku was going to shake his head and that was going to be that and angry tears were pricking at the corner of her eyes- 

A hand landed on her shoulder. She hadn’t noticed Sokka standing up, beside her, glowering out at the assembled crowd.

“And me,” he affirmed, daring anyone to say anything, eyes locking on to High Chief Arnook and Katara could feel herself starting to grin as to his left the Princess started to shake and Pakku scowled in irritation and Arnook blinked.

“Very well.”

It wasn’t until later, the warpaint prickling against her forehead as it dried, that she realised what she’d gotten them both into. The way Aang had looked at them, like he’d thought he could spare them any of this, had made Katara’s chest ache and wish for time enough to talk, to tell him how it had been killing her to watch him launch himself beyond the walls all day while she sat and watched, but there was work for them all to do.

She’d make time, afterwards. For now, she and Sokka had a job to do.

* * *

These morons were all going to die, and it’d be hilarious if they weren’t also going to drag Katara down with them.

He’d thought, at first, that now he was around _real_ warriors from a tribe that seemed to actually have thrived in the last century rather than get whittled down to a handful of idiots too stubborn to die, that he might learn something, see professionals at work.

But their chief was an idiot trusting this mission to a _worse_ idiot, and although the embarrassment and anger still rolled around his stomach he would still consider breaking Hahn’s nose one of the more righteous things he’d ever done.

Except it’d gotten him kicked off the mission. Which would have been okay, because, again, they were all going to die because their idiot leader couldn’t even pronounce Zhao’s name and they were going to try to _blend in-_

Except Katara was still going.

He couldn’t protect her. But that, it turned out, had been true all along.

He exhaled slowly, and tried not to notice the way Yue deliberately didn’t look at him.

It was fine, it was okay, he’d deal with it the way he’d learned to deal with everything: crush it up small and wedge it somewhere it wouldn’t get in the way of doing his job.

He followed her gaze, out from the balcony of the palace, across the city, out towards where Aang had catapulted himself into the Fire Nation armada for another day of putting off the inevitable.

There wasn’t anywhere to run to, after this. That worried Sokka. This was the first time they’d been forced to stand their ground for more than an hour, and they were _not_ doing too good at it.

Aang was just… he was so _small,_ so disarming, everything about him screamed _vulnerable_ and Sokka had been trying and increasingly failing to hold the kid at arm’s length all winter, not because he didn’t trust him still, but because the alternative was worrying himself sick over this kid who was currently, at this exact moment- he could see the smoke rising up over the battleships- trying to fight an armada completely by himself _without hurting any of them too badly._

Katara called him a pessimist for the things he said _out loud._ He didn’t know the word for the feeling he got when he looked at Aang and saw a corpse that had just gotten lucky so far, but he wouldn’t voice it for all the money in Ba Sing Se.

* * *

There wasn’t a lot to do but sit around and wait for sunset. They’d wanted to start their infiltration in the _daytime_ , and even after Katara had explained why that was _ridiculous,_ they hadn’t actually backed down until she’d pointed out that the full moon would make her that much stronger. Which let Hahn, in a way he probably thought was subtle, frame it like they were all waiting for _her._

Sokka had hated this guy from the second he’d started talking, and Katara was beginning to trust her brother as a judge of character.

“So,” she said, offhandedly, as Hahn diligently set an edge to his machete, the rest of the men doing some other similar activities to make them look like they weren’t just killing time, “when was the last time you fought a firebender?”

It wasn’t a _totally_ cruel question, she told herself, even as his head bent over his whetstone and his ears started to flush. If, somehow, the answer had been anything other than _never_ , that would have been good to know. She’d seen her brother learn how to fight, in a rough kind of way, on their trip north, learned herself, but she knew she had an advantage he’d never have, and he’d learned the hard way not to charge a firebender with a spear, not if you didn’t have a _fantastic_ plan.

But it wasn’t just Hahn that was looking uncomfortable, Katara noticed, with growing discomfort. _All_ the men were suddenly looking a lot busier than they had a second ago, like they were afraid she was going to ask _them_ an uncomfortable question next.

Katara suddenly had the awful realisation that she was probably the veteran in the room.

“Hahn,” she asked, more seriously than she probably meant, “was Sokka breaking your nose ...the first fight you’ve ever been in?”

His lack of an answer was answer enough, but he didn’t even have the good sense to look _scared,_ just annoyed, possibly because a girl was having an opinion where he could see it. Like all those times he’d sparred with someone who would pull him up off the ground when they won and congratulate him on a fight well fought somehow _counted._ Honestly, Katara and her brother had at least hunted their own food before Aang had showed up- Hahn looked the kind of pampered that had only ever thrown spears at practise dummies.

Oh, oh this guy was going to _die_. He was going to die and get them _all killed._ If she didn’t do something about it.

* * *

The sun set early this time of year. Sokka guessed they should all be grateful that Admiral Zhao had been stupid or arrogant enough to attack in winter at a full moon. Firebenders got a lot less impressive at night. Not _not-_ dangerous, but… less dangerous.

Aang had come back from beyond the wall, now the sustained assault was more manageable. Which was a result. But he’d looked even more ragged than he had at sunrise, and as Sokka fussed around making sure the kid at least drank some soup, he tried to not make a big deal out of the way Aang’s head bobbed down to his chest before jerking suddenly upwards again.

He should probably let the kid sleep. He should probably do all kinds of things.

He stood to one side, as much a part of the scenery as he could make himself, as Yue sat next to Aang and started to speak.

* * *

Zhao spared a cursory glance at the distant ice wall, and the soldiers being repelled from it, clearly visible under the moonlight. He wasn’t too concerned. Most of them weren’t even firebenders, only needed to keep the pressure on the defenders, keep them tired, hold them in place for the true assault.

He pulled his cloak around his shoulders, but not so close that it wouldn’t billow appropriately, and made his way carefully to the front of the small landing craft, as his hand-picked men filed in behind him. They were the best he had, for now. He’d have better soon.

He wasn’t amazed that his plan had never occurred to anyone before, but he was smugly reminded that victory was so often a matter of audacity.

Zhao grinned, and cracked his knuckles, to set the right tone. He’d originally had a longer speech planned, but Pouhai Fortress had been instructive in a lot of ways, and so he’d boiled it down to the one sentence that mattered.

“Gentlemen,” he announced, to the crowded landing craft, turning back to face his men, one foot rested dramatically on the prow in a way that would be easy to replicate for the portrait later, “prepare for infamy.”

If he had waited, coincidentally, about as long as his first draft speech would have taken, his strike force would have collided with a series of sleek Water Tribe canoes heading in the exact opposite direction. Which would have been embarrassing all round.

* * *

Yue sat on the warm grass, and watched Aang’s knees fold underneath him, as the tattoos on his head and peeking out beneath his sleeves filled with soft light, like one of those strange fishes that lived in the deepest parts of the ocean where the sunlight never reached.

At least this way, she’d had some _part_ in it. If she was doomed to die to save the moon, at least this way _she’d_ been the one to get the Spirits involved. That didn’t matter, except to her, possibly.

Across the pond where Tui and La chased each other endlessly, by the only entrance to the grotto, Sokka was standing, awkwardly, trying not to look at anything, and yeah, she got that. She-

She saw him look up suddenly, head cocked towards the entrance, and pull his machete free from its sheath with terrified urgency, as the sounds of fighting reached her ears.

Oh no.

* * *

“He’s not _here?”_ Hahn proclaimed, indignantly, as Katara’s grip tightened on the front of the crewman’s coat. The crewman looked appropriately intimidated, as the ice that pinned him to the wall began to crawl up towards his throat.

“He went out, took a few landing craft with him,” he elaborated, shallow-breathed, and Katara could _feel_ the dissonance radiating off of Hahn, the confused relief clashing with the disappointment that he had somehow managed to live this long.

“Back to the boats,” Katara snapped, turning to face the huddled warriors in their out-of-date armour. “Go. Maybe you can still catch up to him.” They couldn’t, not without Katara there to speed the canoes along, and speaking of: “I’ve still got something to do here.”

If Katara had expected Hahn to seem conflicted at the thought of leaving her on an enemy ship with no obvious way to escape, she would have been disappointed. But she hadn’t, so she wasn’t.

In the silence left in the wake of fifteen men trying not to look like they were running for their lives, Katara turned back to the gentleman who had been so cooperative earlier. He flinched under her gaze.

“I’ve already told you, the Admiral isn’t-” he protested, but Katara let her teeth show.

“I’ve got a couple other questions, actually.”

* * *

When they told this story, in the years and decades that followed, he would _ensure_ they got this scene right, as he burst into the grotto, the home of two Spirits that had dared come where they were not needed, his remaining soldiers at his back-

He got three strides onto the grass before there was a commotion behind him. As he turned, he saw one of his lieutenants go down, blood spraying from his neck, a young savage bearing him to the ground teeth bared in a snarl typical of his kind, but before Zhao was forced to interrupt his moment of triumph, another of his soldiers took initiative, knocking the boy to the ground with the butt of his spear, and impaling him through the stomach with the blade of it in one smooth motion.

Right. Where was he? Ah, right, triumph.

A native girl with startling hair screamed as they approached, but that was only as notable as the colour of her hair- as she was tackled to the ground before she could come within ten feet of him, Zhao’s eyes were suddenly fixed on an unexpected development.

The Avatar, lit up in pale fire like he’d been the night he’d torn Pouhai Fortress apart, cross-legged on the grass, apparently insensible. For an instant Zhao couldn’t breathe, but as the seconds ground on, it occurred to him that if the boy couldn’t hear the screaming, then he was probably safe to approach.

“An unexpected bonus,” he mused, for the benefit of- no, his lieutenant was dead, wasn’t he?- for the benefit of posterity, then. “We’ll take the brat with us. He’ll be a useful hostage, and killing him would just reset the cycle anyway.”

“Admiral, what about the girl?”

Zhao turned to see that two (it had taken that many? He despaired, he honestly did) of his men were holding the girl on her knees, one with his knife to her throat. Apparently they weren’t able to figure out the last step on their own.

“ _Kill her,”_ he instructed, hoping to convey with tone alone how much he resented them wasting his time with this kind of triviality.

As the blade flashed across her neck, he turned, satisfied that there would be no further interruptions, to the pool.

* * *

 _Koh was curling around him and telling him everything he didn’t want to hear- the Spirits couldn’t help, they were in danger too, and Aang couldn’t even think about that because he had to concentrate on playing the game, keeping his temper and his face slack and suddenly the spirit howled, louder than Aang could contemplate, more sound than a mind could hold, and he was flung backwards with the weight of it and a long, impossibly strong black-and-white hand was reaching into the hollow and grabbing Aang by the scruff of his neck and wrenching him backwards, flinging him towards himself and back towards his body in a rush of wind and light and_ he opened his eyes.

Zhao, looming over the pool, eyes glinting with dark joy, the lifeless body of Tui dropping from his opening hand, flopping back into the water, the screaming still echoing in Aang’s head, the black and pulsing _rage_ overtaking him as his eyes rolled over the red-armoured men filling the grotto, to Yue-

Blood spilling from her neck, falling forwards. The screams grew, welling up from the ground, the water, drowning everything else in the world.

Aang surrendered.

As he unfolded, fast, faster than he’d ever moved before, as though he could make up for being far too late, Zhao turned to look, jaw dropping, and there was something in his eyes that Aang never wanted to see again. And then his arm was grabbed from behind, wrenched upwards, exposing a gap in his armour, just below the armpit, and Aang recognised Sokka just as he jammed his long knife into Zhao’s side once, twice, and pulled it back bloody before plunging it into the Admiral’s throat.

One of Sokka’s fists was black with blood, and he let the knife stay with Zhao’s body as it toppled, and Sokka sank drunkenly to his knees, hands screwed up over the hole in his stomach.

Aang didn’t remember much after that. Not until later.

* * *

Yue had reduced the world down to the ten feet between her and the body of Tui. There was light, and sound, and pain, too much of all three to understand, and all she could do was drag herself forward by her fingertips and hope that she was heading in the right direction. She thought she was, but it’d be embarrassing to die crawling away from her destiny.

She couldn’t breathe but she had to force herself up and her heart rattled in her chest but she was so _close_ and there was Sokka, sunk on his knees, unmoving, surrounded by bodies, eyes wide and white and agonised and she needed him now as she dragged herself forwards and she thought she saw him look to her but she had to drop down again, the grass against her cheek and her neck screaming across a jagged cut.

She gestured, muzzily, waving her hand towards the pool, no longer able to lift her head up off the grass, desperately hoping he’d understand, somehow.

 _I wanted to thank you,_ she thought, blearily, as the world went dark, _you made me feel like a person._

His hands tangled in her coat, pushing her forward with a screech of agony- this stupid _corpse_ she had to drag around- but her hand was trailing in the pool and if she could just find the body before her heart realised she was dead-

* * *

Ty Lee was jerked out of fitful sleep by a hammering on the door, ringing iron echoing through her tiny box that Zhao still thought was a prison.

For a few blissful moments, she ignored it, buoyed up by the vague knowledge that Zhao had other things on his mind right now, but as the seconds wore on and the sounds of fighting, muffled, drifted through the outer wall, she knew it was only a matter of time before- the banging started again, quicker, and Ty Lee swung her legs over the side of her bed, and stood up, bare feet sticking slightly to the cold metal of the floor.

She slid back the peephole and blue eyes stared back.

Ty Lee was backed up away from the door in an instant, but there was a voice-

“Hi, uh… I just realised I don’t know your name?”

A voice Ty Lee _recognised_ . She slipped back to the door, with less caution than she should, because this couldn’t be happening, right? This kind of thing didn’t _happen._ Not to her, anyway.

“It’s you,” she breathed. “The waterbender.”

“Yeah. I’m here because you didn’t say no.”

She hadn’t said _yes_ either. Saying either would have required more courage than she could muster.

“I guess I didn’t,” she replied. But that didn’t make _sense,_ nothing about this made any sense _at all._ She was in the guts of a battleship in the middle of a siege, and this girl was somehow _here,_ and she was supposed to believe it was for _her?_

Was this about the kiss?

The thought screwed Ty Lee’s stomach up in knots, but before she could even imagine how to approach _that,_ the girl tried the handle. It didn’t give.

“It’s locked,” Ty Lee pointed out, hopelessly. “I don’t have a key.”

“That won’t be a problem, trust me,” the waterbender responded, without a second’s hesitation, and that was it, that certainty in her voice, the same certainty she’d used to offer to take Ty Lee away, in the festival, when she’d had a real chance to get away. She’d not taken it. “You coming?”

Now? She was at sea, with Zhao on the verge of an overwhelming victory, and nowhere to run. Running now would be a _terrible_ idea. Ty Lee was pretty sure that everything she’d ever done had been a terrible idea, though, so that balanced out?

“Okay,” she said, quietly enough that she wasn’t sure the waterbender had heard, that she could still take it back-

“Alright stand back,” -okay never mind apparently the girl was _very_ ready to go, and as Ty Lee took half a step back frost blossomed on the hinges and they cracked and screeched and snapped, the door dropping downwards, revealing a sliver of torchlight, and a proffered hand.

* * *

The absence of pain was jarring, or would have been jarring if she was still alive enough to understand pain, or surprise.

Sokka was on his knees in front of her, slick with blood, eyes shining as he looked at her like a drowning man staring one last time at the sky.

If he was looking at her, that meant she was real after all. She’d not been sure. But he was looking at her, had been looking at _her_ the moment she’d met him, and that kind of constancy was reassuring. It’d been so intimidating, at first, the attention of this strange young man who’d been places and fought monsters she could hardly imagine, who’d showed her the sky and acted like there was nothing wrong with her wanting to leave, like there was nothing wrong with her _wanting._

A thousand fractal futures splayed in front of her, and he was hers in none of them. If she’d still been human, she might have been disappointed.

There were… words, words she should say, but she’d never been good at marshalling them on her own and she didn’t have any now, as he looked up at her through tears and blood with an expression on his face fit to break her heart again and the part of her that was-had been-human couldn’t stand it any longer and she leaned in and kissed him before she learned why she mustn’t.

There was an awful sound in his throat as he leaned into her, and it occurred to her that he was dying. Well. If she was meddling, she might as well do it properly. Through his breath into her mouth, she concentrated.

 _Pull,_ she instructed, and his ruined organs began to thread themselves back together, blood flowed, muscles knit and skin folded back and when she was done he was as whole as she could manage. She pulled back, smiling, letting him know it’d be okay, there was nothing he could have done.

He didn’t look like he believed her. Possibly it was too much to try and tell him with a smile.

* * *

The sea was rolling, the ship was lurching, salt water was being flung across the deck, there were firebenders running this way and that -thankfully too busy to pay attention to her right now- and in the middle distance the sea had risen into the form of a giant monster that was smashing the Fire Nation fleet apart like so much driftwood, which Katara couldn’t even _begin_ to figure out.

Katara had officially run out of options.

“Hey!” she yelled over her shoulder as she turned. “You ever fallen in freezing water?”

The girl’s eyes were saucers, terror blazing from them, fixed on the glowing titan. “What? On purpose?”

“Ever! Do you know how-” the ship convulsed, and okay, no time- “never mind! Just hold on!” she ordered, pulling the girl close, wrapping one arm around her waist, gratified to feel her arms lock around Katara in return. Good. She needed a hand free for this.

The little Sokka that lived in her hindbrain was telling her that this wasn’t the ideal moment for testing out new ideas, but it was probably this or drown or pray. Katara wasn't good at praying, and she wasn’t keen on learning how to drown.

As the ship bucked in the wake of the monstrosity slamming a fist on a ship half a mile away, Katara sprang, launched through the air by the momentum of the rolling deck, and she felt the girl’s arms tighten around her as she reached out towards the rolling blackness of the sea and-

-and the sea reached back, and grasped her hand.


	10. That I Should Rise, and You Should Not

The sun rose. Weak light spilled across the water, hitting a chunk of floating ice and scattering an orange glow across it, across the shaved head of Aang, still shining with damp. As the sunlight fell across his neck and shoulders, he curled into himself, staring unseeing at the dark sea.

He’d been awake for a little over an hour, drifting aimlessly in the current. Every so often, his iceberg bumped into something or other. He didn’t pay it too much attention.

He could just stay here, or drop back into the sea and go back to sleep, rest another century. Maybe they’d get it all fixed by then, and nobody would need to take his mind and his body and-

He’d been raised to believe that life was sacred. It was in his bones, in his stomach- _literally_ , as they’d found the first time he’d tried to eat meat, out of curiosity and politeness, his stomach couldn’t take it and he just felt extremely ill-

(Kyoshi Island, the first of what would probably have been a whole week of feasts, if that firebender girl hadn’t shown up. Trying a slice of something Katara had vocally declared to be delicious, the hilariously petulant note of whining in Sokka’s voice as Aang had been suddenly forced to excuse himself so he could discreetly go throw up in a bucket, his two new companions openly baffled that there could be a kind of person that couldn’t eat meat. That had been a good memory, even with the impromptu puking.)

-And none of that had mattered to La. None of that would matter to Master Pakku, or High Chief Arnook. They’d see what had happened as a miracle, as salvation. It wouldn’t matter to them that La, in their anger and sorrow, had _taken_ Aang, taken away Aang’s choices, his restraint.

It wouldn’t matter to them, but it mattered to him. He thought it might matter to Katara too.

He hoped it would matter to Sokka. He hoped- he hoped-

The last thing he remembered before La had grabbed him by the throat was the sight of Sokka trying to hold his guts in.

Shaking his head violently, he pulled himself to his feet with a start, and peered around.

All about him, the wreckage of the Fire Nation armada bobbed, splintered wood and capsized hulls and smoke still curling over the water. And in the distance, the city, carved into the ice. How far had he chased the fleet? Had they been trying to escape? What had he _done?_

A breeze curled around him, and he leapt, lightly hopping onto the carcass of a warship, still sinking, and began to pick his way across the ruined landscape, back towards civilisation.

* * *

Katara hadn’t slept.

Emerging from the water and pulling the two of them onto an icy shore near the base of the ruined wall just in time to watch the rout of what was left of the fleet, pursued by a leviathan, with the moonlight overhead and this strange girl’s arms still locked around her, was a memory she’d have forever.

That had been abruptly spoiled by the _heroic_ entrance of Hahn and his band of morons, looking entirely too pleased with themselves, as though they were busy rewriting the last twelve hours so that they’d actually been involved in a meaningful way and hadn’t run at the first opportunity. Hahn, picking his way across the ice, had congratulated her on capturing a _prisoner._

And there’d been no way to stop him taking the girl away to be put with the rest of the prisoners, not without actually killing him, and hadn’t she actively tried to stop that happening?

She’d argued, but arguments only work if at least one side is actually listening. She’d tried threats, but Hahn had fallen back on his old reliable move of not taking women seriously, and Katara hadn’t, by the barest margin, been able to bring herself to force him to.

But the thing that had finally beaten her was the girl, still blank-faced in shock, from the water or something else, Katara couldn’t tell, allowing herself to be pulled out of her grip and bound by the wrists, before being led away.

And then Katara had been left alone, on the outskirts of the city as the dawn began to paint its blush across the sky, with fury and humiliation crawling up her neck.

Oh no, this _would not stand._

* * *

HIgh Chief Arnook was talking, _still talking,_ and Sokka was trying to hold in a scream.

He must have passed out, from exhaustion or something else, because this morning he’d woken up in a bed with no memory of how he’d got there. For a few seconds, he’d thought it had all been just another nightmare.

But he’d sat up, and seen his parka, tossed carelessly over a chair, heavy with blood and ruined, gouged open by a spear that should have killed him. And then High Chief Arnook had arrived, all ready to greet the hero of the hour, or at least one of them.

When they’d found him, in the grotto, alone, up to his elbows in corpses, _without a scratch on him,_ they’d been impressed, apparently.

He’d killed two men from behind, and should have died for it. He would have been completely useless even if he _had_ been as impressive as Chief Arnook seemed to be assuming he’d been.

She’d known, Arnook was explaining, and Sokka hated him, hated him for how calm he could be, how solemn and dignified, when Sokka wanted to scream and cry and break something with his hands-

She’d always known. And Sokka couldn’t help but remember everything he’d said, every stupid thoughtless comment that must have sounded like him taunting her-

And now she was gone. Gone, and out of his reach, and he couldn’t apologise in a way that mattered.

“You must be very proud,” he muttered, not bothering to flatten the bitterness in his voice. If there was a price to pay for that, he couldn’t find the energy to care.

* * *

Katara had been terrified to learn that Chief Arnook was visiting Sokka in the healers’ quarters, and the reassurances that her brother was fine hadn’t cooled her down at all, but the sight of him, arms crossed as he lounged on, rather than in, his bed, whole and healthy, did put her at ease long enough to get to the main reason why she’d come all the way across the city.

“Chief Arnook, I need you to release a prisoner into my- _our_ care.”

Arnook blinked, owlishly. “Well, this is certainly an irregular request. You have a habit of making those, Katara.”

Katara gritted her teeth, but tried not to show that she was doing it. Diplomacy was an important skill.

Sokka finally looked up, staring blankly through her.

“Katara,” he said, deliberately. “Why are you trying to buy a slave?”

“Prisoner of war,” Chief Arnook corrected, smoothly. Sokka blinked, once.

“Sure,” he conceded. “Katara, why are you trying to buy a prisoner?”

Katara set her jaw. “It’s… it’s the Admiral’s wife,” she said, and Sokka nodded, slowly, dully, and what had _happened_ to him? She’d never seen him so… _absent,_ and the chill of the unfamiliar was crawling up her spine as he started to speak.

“Chief,” he mumbled, eyes never leaving hers. “The prisoner Katara’s talking about is… a friend of ours. She saved Aang’s life on three separate occasions, and honestly we’d have never made it this far without her.”

Katara blinked. The sheer blitheness of the lie as it left Sokka’s lips was shocking, the complete lack of hesitation to lie to the Chief of the tribe like that-

“I see. Well. I suppose we can make an exception, if you think she can help you.”

-Well. She couldn’t argue with results. As Chief Arnook bustled out of the room, and Katara moved to follow, she paused, and turned back to her brother. Something was _extremely_ wrong.

“Sokka,” she said, lowering her voice. “What happened?”

If she’d been anyone else, she wouldn’t have seen it, the shudder that ran through him, the way his eyes flicked to the ground before settling back on her, the tiny hitch in his breath.

“Yue-” he started, and the raw rasp in his voice knocked the wind out of her- “she didn’t make it.”

Katara’s heart lurched. “Sokka-”

But he waved her away, vaguely. “Go, follow the Chief. Who knows what he might decide is a great idea if he’s left alone.”

She didn’t move, frozen in the doorway. Sokka found the strength to roll his eyes in a passable expression of fondness.

“Seriously, _go._ You’ve got a widow to rescue.”

And the problem was: he was right.

“We’ll talk later, alright?” she promised, but he just waved her away.

* * *

The first Sokka was aware of it was an indignant squak from one of the healers, followed by the crash of something heavy hitting the floor, or a wall. Sokka was on his feet and whirling towards where he’d seen his machete last before his door slammed open, and Aang was in the room without stopping, slamming into him and knocking the wind out of him.

He was shaking, Sokka realised, after a breathless pause. He was shaking and heaving and _crying_ , fists bunching in Sokka’s shirt, and Sokka was perfectly still, barely daring to breathe.

“I thought- I thought- I thought you were _dead-”_ Aang choked, and for an instant something welled up in Sokka’s chest, but he clamped down on it, swallowing it. He couldn’t fall apart here, now. He was needed. He was _needed._

After Mom had died, there’d been nights Katara woke up screaming. He’d learned what to do, kind of. He let his hands fall, cradling the back of Aang’s head and across his shoulders.

“Hey, hey,” he murmured, the rasp to his voice still there but under control now. “I’m okay, see? Not a scratch.”

Aang nodded, drunkenly, but the tears kept coming, and with a hitch in his throat he continued-

“And I- and the Spirit, it- I couldn’t control what I was doing and I-”

He trailed off, incomprehensible, words lost in a tide of horror and shame, but Sokka had heard enough.

“It’s okay, I get it,” he reassured, and he thought he did. “We’ll work it out.”

After Dad had left, there’d been days Katara couldn’t cope, too overwhelmed with grief and anger, and that had been okay. He’d learned to hunt by himself, out on the tundra, under the endless sun, learned to compensate, to cover, to do what needed doing, do what he could, to _assume responsibility._

Sokka couldn’t kill a fleet.

He’d learn.

“-and I think I’ve got snot on your shirt?” Aang’s babbling wound down with a bleary half-chuckle.

Sokka snorted, softly.

“Okay that one I can _absolutely_ not deal with.”

* * *

Ty Lee shifted uneasily in her seat as she wondered, again, if she’d made an awful mistake.

The way the waterbender had marched into the holding cells, flanked by two serious-looking men in furs, and pointed her out, like a particularly shiny ostrich-horse (were ostrich-horses supposed to be shiny? She could never remember), was beginning to remind Ty Lee of Azula.

(Azula was dead.)

The way the waterbender had demanded, _insistently,_ that Ty Lee have the chains taken off her, and dismissed the serious fur-men before leading Ty Lee through the slightly ruined city, paying absolutely no attention to the openly hostile looks Ty Lee was getting from literally everybody didn’t remind her of anyone at all, and, if she was being honest (she was so bad at being honest) was really the only thing stopping her from wondering if she’d just traded one Zhao for another.

(Zhao was… dead? The tribesmen had said so, but Ty Lee suspected they’d say that whatever had actually happened.)

The waterbender had led her back to a ...house? This was how houses worked in the Water Tribes? Just… a big room? Anyway the bison was sitting behind it, chewing philosophically on a pile of seaweed, so… this was where the Avatar lived?

And the waterbender had just… invited her to sit down, and then had stood up suddenly to get Ty Lee a cup of water.

And the thought she was trying to escape, the thought that hung in the air, was: _was this all about the kiss?_

She hadn’t meant this. The kiss had been… it had been safe, because she was never meant to see the waterbender again. Ty Lee had always been clumsy with affection- she’d never quite figured out how much was too much, what lines were inviolate and which ones people just _pretended_ were.

It had been the only way she could think of to get across what she’d been feeling, and that was all it had been meant to be.

The waterbender came back into view, holding two cups of water, and handed one to Ty Lee with a kind of emphatic enthusiasm that very nearly sloshed all the water out of the cup. Ty Lee took it, delicately, and set the cup in her lap.

“I thought you might be thirsty… oh. Oh wow it just occurred to me I don’t know your name? Mine’s Katara. Katara’s my name. Hi.”

Ty Lee blinked, as the waterbender, who was called Katara, cleared her throat, and moved towards the bench, but seemed to catch herself before she got half a step.

“May I sit?”

It was her house, but maybe the rules were different here? Ugh, so many _rules,_ so many customs and practices and ways to upset people that she’d never been good at picking up on even when it had been her _own_ people-

“Sure!” she replied, careful to smile. “I’m Ty Lee, by the way.”

* * *

“...Now, have I forgotten anything?”

“No, Mrs Zhou.”

“Such manners! Excellent. Now, back to your sweeping.”

“Yes, Mrs Zhou.”

She nodded happily to herself as Li nodded, and went back to work. Such a diligent boy. Not one for conversation, which could be a disadvantage in a waiter, but he wielded attentive silence with wonderful precision. He waited, and listened, and did as he was told. She could work with that.

The eyepatch was unfortunate, in all sorts of ways, but she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of mostly-unearned pride as she watched, from behind the counter, as Li plucked the broom from its place leaning against the wall, and began pushing it across the floor with practiced competence. He’d had _such_ trouble when he’d first arrived in town, tripping over things and misjudging distances and getting so _angry_ every time… well, it hadn’t taken a genius to realise that his asymmetry had been quite a _recent_ development.

She wondered, sometimes, what had happened. She knew a few people who had some theories. He might have been a soldier, perhaps. She knew better than to ask, though. No profit to interrogating her staff, at least not about something so personal.

It was a shame, though. If he hadn’t fully a third of his face hidden under a black leather patch, with a ruined ear hinting at what lay beneath, he might have been quite handsome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sokka's coping mechanisms are healthy and normal and totally fine. Ty Lee's survival strategies are likewise completely without any potential for long-term damage. Things are only ever a problem if you talk about them.


	11. I May Tell You To Run

Ty Lee knew tension. You couldn’t grow up in Fire Nation high society without learning to recognise it, developing survival strategies, reading the signs, knowing where not to stand, who not to talk to, who not to be seen not talking to.

Ty Lee had learned more from Azula than she’d ever picked up in school.

Something had happened, between the Avatar, Katara’s brother, and the leaders of the Northern Water Tribe. Nobody was talking about it, but nobody had to.

Her usual tactics-  _ be agreeable, be pleasant, don’t cause trouble, make them like you, make them want you-  _ wouldn’t work, at least not in this frozen palace, surrounded by so many people predisposed to hate her.

So Ty Lee had spent three days pretending to be Mai- quiet, unobtrusive, forgettable, attached to her patron at the hip. It seemed to be working, in that she hadn’t been arrested or killed yet. Even though she could never understand how that hands-in-opposite-sleeves thing was meant to work.

* * *

 

“Are you sure we can’t persuade you to wait? The escort will be ready before the end of the week.”

Katara sighed, and looked over to the bison, where Ty Lee was helping Sokka load the saddle. Her brother worked quickly, efficiently, and possibly only she could tell that something was wrong.

“Apologies, Master Pakku, but we’re kind of in a rush.”

It’d been Aang that said what had happened at the grotto, and even then he’d not seen most of it. Sokka had been silent, and Katara couldn’t think where to start asking. He’d said he was fine, the one time she’d tried, clumsily, to ask, too eager to accept his non-answers.

Aang had said he remembered thinking Sokka was dead.

Katara had come to the decision that the sooner they were away from the North Pole, the better.

Master Pakku sighed softly, in complete lack of surprise.

“I expected as much. At least take these, if you have to leave so quickly.”

Katara turned to face him, as he awkwardly handed her a series of scrolls, and a small vial of liquid.

“Instruction manuals. I expect you to take over teaching the Avatar from here,” he said, sternly. “I sincerely hope he listens to you more than he did to me. And the vial is water from the Spirit Oasis. It has… special properties. Healing, primarily, of things that otherwise would be impossible to fix. Try not to need it.”

Katara took the gifts, nodding solemnly, while joining the dots in her head.

“Anything for Sokka?” she asked, lightly, as Master Pakku fixed the distant form of her brother with a strange look.

“Tell him to take care,” he said, before abruptly turning on his heel, and pacing back towards the city.

* * *

 

General Fong waited until he was in the safety of his office, leaning heavily on the closed door, before he fully committed to panicking.

The Avatar. Had brought a Fire Nation spy. Into  _ his fortress. _ And dismissed his  _ entirely reasonable _ concerns outright. Had threatened to  _ leave! _ The one key to a quick and unequivocal annihilation of the Fire Nation, and he was a childish brat that wanted to run at the first sign of things not going his way!

Still, Fong consoled himself. After he backed off, knowing a losing battle when he saw it, the Avatar had in fact  _ not _ left, and  _ had _ consented to his plan, and so there was every chance he  _ would _ master the Avatar State in short order, and then it would simply be a matter of getting him across the sea, watching him obliterate the Caldera, and sweeping up any bits that still looked like they were going to put up a fight.

And if his pet spy had any objections… well.

* * *

 

“Sooo... “ Ty Lee began, once she was moderately sure they were alone, “General Fong seems nice?”

Katara sighed, and rolled onto her back, staring blankly at the top bunk. “I’m sorry. We really should’ve thought about this beforehand.”

From the opposite wall, Katara’s brother huffed in agreement. The Avatar mumbled, but was already drifting off to sleep.

The General had offered to give them all their own rooms, but Katara and her brother had turned that down- a Water Tribe thing, maybe? Their houses, Ty Lee recalled, did basically seem to be one big room. So, bunks it was.

Ty Lee would have preferred her own space, but she knew better than to ask.

“It’s okay,” she said, instead. “I should have expected it.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Katara replied, and her tone made it sound like a rebuke even if her words didn’t.

Instead of answering, Ty Lee climbed up, into her bunk, rolled into bed, and deliberately tried to avoid thinking about what she thought she was doing. Why she was in an Earth Kingdom fortress, far from home, having, apparently, switched sides without really noticing when that had happened?

In the dark, the sounds of guards moving in the corridors outside was terrifying, and Ty Lee silently reconsidered her stance on sharing a room.

* * *

 

Katara could feel the tension grow every day they stayed in this fortress, letting General Fong and his posse of inquiring minds experiment on Aang, to no success. Soldiers loitered around them, and if the Kyoshi Islanders had followed them around like they were hoping some of Aang’s magic would rub off on them, these guys seemed a lot less awestruck and a  _ lot _ more threatening.

Katara was probably a little responsible for that, and they  _ really _ should have thought of giving Ty Lee one of their spare Kyoshi Warrior outfits  _ before _ arriving in Earth Kingdom territory- the heavy leather was almost all gone from both sets of armour, used to reinforce and repair their own clothing in the journey north, but Ty Lee had just said she preferred to dress light anyway, and that was  _ another  _ thing that was starting to grind Katara’s teeth, how it didn’t seem like Ty Lee could disagree with  _ anything _ Katara said- but they’d  _ explained, _ to the extent that it was any of the General’s business, that Ty Lee wasn’t a spy, and it was a  _ definite _ bad sign that the General hadn’t been particularly graceful about backing down, but then he was totally happy to pervert the Avatar Cycle just so he could turn Aang into a weapon, so what had she expected?

The entire fortress made her head hurt, a constant dull pressure headache built up over days of watching them poke Aang with needles and make him drink weird concoctions and throw mud at him, like the throbbing pain one sometimes got that heralded a thunderstorm on the horizon.

If Katara, later, was to pinpoint a moment when that storm  _ really _ hit, it was probably the moment that General Fong decided that the only thing left to do was to try and kill Aang for real.

* * *

 

Everything went bad so quickly Katara couldn’t even notice it happening- one minute Sokka and the general were having their usual argument about how much of their time he was wasting, and Aang was putting his foot down and finally saying  _ no more,  _ and suddenly Fong had barked an order or given a signal or something and suddenly spears were out and more to the point  _ were being thrown at Aang. _

Sokka and the general were screaming at each other and soldiers were closing in behind her and Ty Lee and Aang was dodging spears and still holding on to his control and Sokka was screaming and the general was screaming and Sokka was  _ screaming- _

And the earth swallowed him whole, still screaming, and smoothed over him like the tide. And he was gone.

* * *

 

The Avatar burst into light, scintillating glare like the gleam of diamonds, the wind picking up Fong’s cape and pulling it towards the boy as he rose, plucked from the ground by a whirlwind that now curled around him, picking up dust and rising into the sky and it had  _ worked,  _ finally something had  _ worked,  _ and the Avatar bellowed and brought two fists together in a move that shook the earth.

Incredible. Now, all they needed to do was-

The shaking hadn’t stopped, was growing in strength, was splitting the flagstones beneath his feet, the cracks growing and climbing up the walls and  _ that _ hadn’t been the plan at all, but the Avatar didn’t seem to be in the mood to negotiate any more and the walls began to crack and slip and rumble and his men were fleeing and he had to fix this before the boy brought the whole fortress crashing down around him-

He pulled, reaching down for the little cylinder of space he’d hidden the boy’s companion in, but before he could grab the tribal and get him to calm the Avatar down something hit him very hard on the back of the head and everything went dark.

* * *

 

Katara let the ice drop from around her forearm as she collapsed to her knees, pulling Sokka up, trying not to notice his trembling hands and his gasps for air, as he tried to say something, but whatever it was got swallowed up in the storm that had been Aang.

As they watched, paralysed, Aang’s form, barely visible through the hurricane, stone rippling like water around him, the walls shaking and cracking all around, Ty Lee launched forwards faster than thought, loosed towards Aang like an arrow.

“...Wha?” Sokka mumbled, still trembling, as Katara’s arms tightened around him and Ty Lee charged headlong towards the Avatar, still accelerating, “Wha’s she- she’s gonna-”

Fifty yards ahead of Aang the blur leapt and was caught in the swirling air like a leaf in the breeze, pulled up, up, terrifyingly high up in a smooth arc and Katara’s heart was in her throat and as the distant scrap of pink drifted above Aang’s head, right into the eye of the storm, she dropped like a meteor.

Katara didn’t remember screaming, but she could feel Sokka wincing as her nails dug into his shoulder but all at once the wind dropped and the dust settled and the light went out and Katara could swear, just for a second, she could see Ty Lee balancing, upside-down, on one hand caught in the nape of Aang’s neck, holding it between thumb and forefinger.

And then she was tumbling forward, twisting and rolling and contorting towards them, away from Aang’s suddenly limp form, before coming to a sharp and sudden halt, standing abruptly upright, arms spread wide, the index finger on each hand extended towards the sky, eyes closed in serene concentration.

There was a moment of perfect stillness, of five hundred men holding their breath, the world spinning on Ty Lee’s axis. Katara couldn’t look away.

And then, with an absurd sincerity that Katara had no defences against, Ty Lee bowed, as though flowers were being thrown at her feet.

“Um,” Sokka croaked, through dry lips. “Are we  _ completely _ sure Aang’s the last airbender?”

* * *

 

It wasn’t so hard! As long as you remembered to roll when you hit the ground. Really important to remember that part.

* * *

 

After Fong came to, his head throbbing, he was informed that the Avatar had fled south, towards Omashu. The Avatar, in the company of a Fire Nation agent, was en route to the Fire Nation’s newest stronghold. The Avatar had almost destroyed his fortress, doing  _ considerable _ damage to the walls, while outside the Fire Nation gathered their forces. One of the Avatar’s people had  _ assaulted _ him.

This had gone  _ almost  _ as badly as it could possibly have.

He had to warn the Council.

* * *

 

Travelling alone in the Earth Kingdom, even in times like this, with both sides more concerned with rearming and patching themselves up before the next push than active clashes, was not something a man did if he could avoid it. Lone travellers tended, as far as they could, to band together, if only for the benefits of having someone to talk to on the road.

Bato would have not, at first impression, chosen this man to share the road with- he’d been waved down by this elderly, rotund man, with a backpack full of china and nothing in his hand but a walking stick, and the first thought Bato had was  _ target. _ The man, with his wide, guileless smile, and his easy laugh, looked like the kind of thing bandits dreamed of.

That had been his first impression, anyway.

Huffing, Bato leant on his spear, more heavily than he’d expected, and gingerly explored under his tunic, worried that his stitches might have opened in the ruckus.

Apparently not. The nuns had done a fine job, it seemed.

“Well, grandfather,” Bato said, once he was satisfied he wasn’t about to commit the faux pas of bleeding in the middle of a conversation, “I confess I wouldn’t have expected  _ that.” _

The man smiled, his usual wide grin, but it somehow cast a different light, with his walking stick gripped so firmly in his hands, picking his way around insensible brigands with the casual air of a man familiar with violence.

“I must say, the standards of bandits must have slipped, if they can be so easily bested by an old man and an invalid.”

“Oh?” Bato replied, cocking an eyebrow. “You never said you were ill.”

The man laughed, broad and loud, throwing his head back and exposing his teeth, and it occurred to Bato, not for the first time, that the man had never offered his name.

But then, Bato had never asked.


	12. Understand Dependance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I might start putting warnings at the end, which satisfies my Avoid Spoilers Via Warnings urges, and also makes me less of a dick.
> 
> This isn't actually a particularly warningful chapter, but no time like the present, etc.

Ty Lee was, officially, confused. Despite what unkind people might have assumed, this didn’t happen too often- she only got confused by things she tried to understand, and she only tried to understand things that didn’t make sense.

For example: yesterday, the Avatar’s group had made sense. Yesterday, after the Earth Kingdom general that had been hosting them had turned out to be unstable and violent, had been a day of fleeing south on Appa, with an intensity that had started terrified, and slowly turned bored, before settling down in a canyon by a waterfall, after making sure they were as far from any roads as possible. They’d sorted out a watch rota (a rota which, Ty Lee noticed, did not include her, which, again, made sense), made dinner, and settled down to a fitful and worried sleep. That had all made sense.

Today? Today the Avatar was pretending to be an octopus, and Sokka and Katara had gotten  _ distractingly _ naked.

To be completely fair, the Avatar had taken his shirt off too, but he was still young enough to qualify as ‘a goofy kid’ in Ty Lee’s mind, while the two siblings  _ definitely _ fell into a whole different bracket, and there was a thin pale line of scar tissue running up Sokka’s flat stomach and Katara’s shoulders were pricked with sweat as she moved through waterbending forms, and neither of them were wearing anything more than their under-wrappings and nobody seemed to think anything of it, and was that a Water Tribe thing? Except everyone at the North Pole had worn pants at all times, Ty Lee was almost sure, and she could probably ask, except that would have required her to do anything that wasn’t sit in Appa’s saddle while trying not to look at anyone too long.

This? This was confusing. This was not how prisoner-jailer dynamics were meant to go.

Because that was what she was, right? They treated her well- by which she meant that Aang asked her opinion on foods and Katara kept her in the loop about what was going on and Sokka pretended she didn’t exist as much as he could- but they’d picked her up in chains and, yes, they’d taken the chains off, but they had taken her away to places she couldn’t recognise and couldn’t escape from and she was so,  _ so _ aware that she was at their mercy.

They seemed merciful! But-

But.

Well. It was better than Zhao, at least. So far.

* * *

 

Of all the people Ty Lee had expected never to see again, she hadn’t even  _ considered _ Tom-Tom. Honestly, she hadn’t even recognised him at first, but Ty Lee never forgot an aura.

“You  _ know _ this kid?”

Ty Lee put her hands up to her mouth like she could push the name back in, but all eyes were on her now, and not in a way she could  _ deal _ with, she could feel the judgement from everyone around the campfire, and she shouldn’t just  _ say _ things, she knew too much, too many things that these people maybe shouldn’t know? And-

“Yeah! I- I went to school with his sister.”

The Avatar nodded, like this was all basically normal, and the Earth Kingdom soldiers glared harder, and of all the eyes on her, the only one to make her not want to duck her head and hide in her arms were Sokka’s, and was that weird? But he was the only one  _ evaluating,  _ cool and bland and probably trying to figure out if she was lying, and she wasn’t! So maybe he’d realise that?

“That’s a pretty wild coincidence,” Katara said, bouncing the infant on her knee, not looking at Ty Lee at all.

“Here’s a question,” Sokka said, so suddenly it made Ty Lee sit up with a start. “Y’know, since you’ve got inside information. Are we doing this kid a favour, sending him back?”

Ty Lee blinked. “What do you mean?”

Sokka shrugged, glowering at nothing in particular, furrowed brows deepened by the firelight. “I’m just saying, from what I’ve been hearing the Fire Nation doesn’t necessarily have a great track record when it comes to parents being not terrible at their jobs.”

Ty Lee decided not to start thinking about what  _ that _ implied, or she might never stop.

But still. Mai had always characterised her relationship with her parents as ‘basically fine’, but Ty Lee knew what Mai’s aura looked like when she was lying.

_ “Welllll….” _

* * *

 

Ukano grit his teeth as King Bumi’s cage was lowered down, and glared at the figures huddled together at the other end of the platform, and all he could think was how  _ smug _ his brother in law was going to be about this. Mister Never-Had-A-Prison-Break had been insufferable enough before, but  _ now?  _ Now Ukano had been Governor of a city for less than a week, and the  _ entire _ civilian population had caught a plague and been run out of town, the Avatar had  _ kidnapped his son, _ and now the only way to get him back was to trade the  _ one _ prisoner he had left, the most dangerous Earthbender on record, the Mad King-

“Governor Ukano! There’s something else!”

The Avatar had raised his voice, as he paced towards him, Tom-Tom in his arms, and ...the Avatar knew his name.

How did the Avatar know his name?

“You should really write to your daughter more! It sounds like- I mean, I used my Avatar Powers and saw that she went through a really rough time after Prince… Prince…  _ the _ Prince died, and it’s  _ not  _ great that you guys weren’t there for her!”

This could not be happening. This had to be one of his nightmares again. Any second now the Avatar was going to morph into one of his masters at the Academy, or the whole city would turn into a ball of snakes. Ukano would have taken snakes over this.

The Avatar was still walking, almost upon him now, but he wasn’t talking any quieter  _ at all.  _ At Ukano’s flanks, he  _ knew _ his guards were looking at him askance.

“People do weird things when they’re mourning, and maybe wanting a change of scenery was the right decision for her, but it’s been  _ years! _ Do you even know where she’s living these days? You’re her  _ family!  _ It’s your  _ job! You should care more!” _

The boy was in his face now, nostrils flaring, eyebrows furrowed, and he thrust Tom-Tom into his face with undisguised venom. Tom-Tom, for his part, burbled obliviously, which Ukano found  _ wonderfully _ reassuring. At least  _ someone _ here wasn’t judging him.

* * *

 

This had been, Ty Lee reflected, philosophically, as she wrung swamp water out of her braid, a pretty bad day, even before the twister had knocked them out of the air- King Bumi’s unsettling comfort in captivity had cast a weird mood over everyone, and they’d been kind of aimless even when they’d been moving, but now? Lost in a swamp, with no road, no knowing which way was out, no Appa, no supplies, no-

Nobody around her.

Ty Lee didn’t see any particular point in going somewhere if she had no way of knowing it wouldn’t be worse, and so she pulled herself up out of the water, onto the cleanest stump she could find, and closed her eyes.

She almost didn’t notice the whispers when they started- bugs and birds and other things were everywhere, this swamp was  _ full _ of small noises, so the creeping murmur crawling up her spine was almost lost in the din, but the hand on the back of her neck was  _ unmistakable _ and she shot up and turned around and there was nothing there and this was normal, this was something she could deal with.

Zhao was dead. They’d told her, Zhao was dead. She knew what it looked like when someone was lying to her.

So who was that, in blood-red armour, wading through the swamp towards her?

She turned and  _ ran _ .

The swamp was crawling up her legs and pulling her down and the roots tangled beneath the water were coiling around her ankles and branches were fingers carding through her hair and her head jerked to the side baring her throat and something wrapped around it and in her ear she whispered  _ stay _ and something around her ankle went  _ click. _

* * *

 

She almost broke Sokka’s jaw, when they found her the next morning.

* * *

 

When it was all over, all misunderstandings untangled, everyone reunited and safe, Katara found Ty Lee sitting, hunched over, in the higher branches of the great tree, staring out over the swamp, while around and above and below them the air buzzed with insects and the sunset turned the air to copper.

“There was a girl,” Ty Lee said, without turning around. “She was- I thought she was my best friend. We went to school together, I visited her every chance I got. I thought she was  _ amazing. _ And I think maybe she was! She was so smart and so brave and she never changed her mind and she never backed down, even though-”

Ty Lee shook the memory out of her head, and Katara hardly dared to breathe.

“And when I found out about- about  _ Zhao,  _ about how it had all been  _ arranged, _ I thought ‘she’ll help me, she’ll help me get away’. So I went to see her, and I told her what my- my parents had done, and I told her I was going to run away, to join a circus. I asked for her help.”

There was a choke, a sound pulled to pieces before it left Ty Lee’s throat, but before Katara could move Ty Lee started again-

“She had me  _ arrested. _ She locked me in her room and told the guards and told my parents and told  _ Zhao. _ I-” Ty Lee, apparently without noticing, pulled her foot into her lap, and massaged her ankle roughly- “I got married in  _ chains. _ Because she wouldn’t let me go.”

Ty Lee turned around, and Katara, if she’d been expecting anything, had been expecting tears. But her eyes were hollow.

“You remind me of her.”

Katara’s jaw dropped, but before she could say anything- rush to her defense, or apologise, or  _ something  _ to alleviate the stab in her chest, Ty Lee raised a hand.

“I don’t know if that’s fair. But  _ I don’t know if you’ll let me go.  _ Because I don’t know what I’m  _ doing _ here! You pulled me out of the wreckage of the fleet, and you wouldn’t let the Water Tribes keep me, and you’ve brought me to places where I’ve made things  _ worse _ and I don’t know what you  _ want from me!” _

For six long, endless seconds, Katara could do nothing but breathe. She sank down to her knees, feeling the bark of the tree underneath her, and bowed her head.

She had to make this right. She  _ had to be better than this. _

“When I- I first saw you, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. You were strange and terrifying and you could have taken us apart so easily but you didn’t. And when we talked at the festival- I realised you were someone that needed help. I thought I could help you. That’s all. And I didn’t explain myself, when I should have. I can’t- the boys- ... the North Pole was rough for the both of them, I understand why they didn’t think about this. But I should have. And I’m sorry. If you want to leave, that’s not a problem. If you want us to take you somewhere, we’ll try.”

Katara kept her eyes on her knees as she heard footsteps lightly picking their way towards her, stopping a few yards away. The sound of Ty Lee folding into a sitting position was almost imperceptible.

The silence dragged on. Katara couldn’t have broken it for anything.

“I want to make a deal. Because… because I think Aang might be better than I’ve heard, and because flying on Appa is  _ great,  _ and because I’m not gonna ask you to take me to the Caldera- I’m  _ not, _ because I can see how that’s gonna end and I don’t see the adorable lemur surviving that trip- because I might have been declared dead back home, and because... I don’t know what else to do. And I  _ definitely _ don’t understand what Aang and all of you are trying to accomplish? You’re fighting the Fire Nation but since I’ve joined you’ve spent more time going against the Earth Kingdom?”

Katara slowly let her eyes drift up, to see Ty Lee, legs folded neatly underneath her, looking up at the horizon.

“Aang is… Aang is trying to save the world.” That sounded so  _ ridiculous, _ except it was the truth, and Ty Lee cocked her head, and turned, letting her feet dangle off the edge of the branch. Around them, the wind turned, pulling things to and fro, and, after a long moment, Ty Lee spoke.

“When I was a kid, I used to believe the Universe had a plan, for me, for us, for everyone, you know? That it’d send signals, like  _ this is where you’re meant to be.  _ I don’t know that I can believe that again, but… maybe? I’d like to.”

Katara dared a smile.

“Well. You wanna make this official?”

* * *

 

“Avatar Aang,” she said, from a careful distance away, near enough to have a chance to close and take him down- just in case!- and far enough away to bolt if this went  _ so _ wrong, “I… haven’t actually introduced myself.” She bowed, in the proper way she’d been taught to do a lifetime or two ago, briefly, and pulled herself back to her full height as the Avatar rose to his feet and Sokka turned away from dismantling the campsite, eyebrow raised suspiciously.

“My name is Lady Ty Lee, of the Caldera, and I’ve heard you’re trying to save the world. I’d like to travel with you, for a while.”

Aang cupped his chin in one hand in a way that almost hid a growing smile, and she didn’t have to worry that he didn’t get it. “I don’t know, what exactly do you bring to the table?”

“She could kill us all, Aang,” Sokka chimed in, blandly, and frowned as Katara shot him a glare. “What? It’s a skill!”

Ty Lee considered. “Well, I can do a headstand for half an hour.”

Aang blinked. “Are you- you have to show me. Congratulations, you’re hired, let’s go save the world.”

Sokka shrugged, falling into step behind the group as they moved towards Aang.

“I still think my point’s more useful.”

* * *

 

“...The Avatar has attacked the Earth Kingdom army, apparently unprovoked, and there’s a letter here for you. The bird came in from Omashu this morning.”

Mai’s nails left grooves in the handle of her broom. Master Piandao, world expert in Ignoring Social Cues, handed it to her, and stood up from his breakfast, ambling out into the sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: abuse victim relives (non-graphically) abuse via magical hallucinations.


	13. Call You Weak Until You're Violent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings in the end notes.

It had rained last night, and the air was still cold, with a sharp tang of mud on the air, and beneath the barely-adequate shade of a large tree, Azula sat up with dew still clinging to her hair.

By the road, winding in parallel, was a stream, small and slow and muddy, but if there had ever been a time she cared about that, she couldn’t remember. On exhausted legs, cold to the bone, she stumbled over to the water, and collapsed on the slick bank, cupping water in her hands and drinking.

“Oh _Azula,”_ Mother sighed, from behind her, so disappointed, always so disappointed. “You shouldn’t drink that, it can’t be good for you. You should take better care of yourself.”

Azula hadn’t had fresh water in days, until she’d stumbled across this stream. She didn’t bother explaining that to Mother, though. It never worked, trying to reason with her, scream at her, punch lightning through her heart. So she ignored her, as much as she could.

“Look at you,” Zuko snarled, looming over her, his reflection clear in the water, disgust twisting in his one eye, and it was impossible not to feel a stab of relief. “Pathetic.”

They never appeared at the same time, at least, swapping places like play-actors, one slipping behind the curtain just in time for the other to take the stage. And she preferred Zuko’s open hatred over Mother’s false concern, anyway.

* * *

The underground (ha _ha_ ) earthbending tournament had been just so much noise and sweat to Katara, who had started off irritated and quickly become bored, at least as soon as the sound had become as solid as a wall, something to put her back to and not register again, until she’d shifted on the hard bench of her seat and caught Ty Lee out of the corner of her eye.

The girl had come alive in the crowded atmosphere, cheering indiscriminately, radiating energy that had caught Sokka up without a struggle, and now the two of them were screaming more or less, as far as Katara could tell, at random, cheering whichever musclebound clown seemed to be doing the best at any given moment.

Except.

Every so often, Ty Lee caught herself, looking around guiltily for a second, clearly uncomfortably conscious of how much noise she was making, how much space she was taking up, and Katara could feel her teeth start to grind.

Someone had tried to beat this out of her, this vitality. Like huffing on a campfire, Ty Lee roared to life in this moment, and someone- at least one someone- had tried to snuff it out. Had looked at Ty Lee at her best, and decided that it had to go.

At least one of those someones was dead. Aang had said so.

Which was good! But that would have been Katara’s first suggestion, and it hadn’t worked, because Ty Lee still had to shake off this feeling, whatever it was, and Katara couldn’t understand what she’d gone through but she knew she had to _fix_ it.

Murder hadn’t done it. So… what would Aang do?

If Sokka gave her an odd look as she flagged down one of the mobile vendors with the little trays, and bought a fistful of little pennants with someone’s- she didn’t stop to look, and couldn’t hear what the salesman had been trying to tell her anyway- initials crudely picked out, and handed one to him and one to Ty Lee and cupped her mouth and joined in the shouting, well. As long as only he thought she was being weird, she could deal with that.

* * *

There was a road, so she was following it. Roads went somewhere. That was the point of roads.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Or- she could remember the _meal,_ a scrawny rabbit-thing she’d been quick enough to bring down before it could run; when she’d split it open its belly had been full of fat worms and she’d almost thrown it away- and she knew she could feel her stomach groan in complaint, her limbs heavy, but the time in between moments was hazy, indistinct.

“You’re an idiot,” Zuko snarled, pacing beside her, blood dripping from his face like he was trying to disgust her, “what are you even _doing?_ Do you know where you’re even going?”

She was going down the road, but she didn’t fall into the trap of talking back. That never ended well.

She tripped, almost collapsing, stumbling forward, momentum leaving her lurching forward, and Zuko spat on the ground, thick and dark, and bared his teeth.

“Is this it? Is this why I saved you? Is this what I shielded you for? For you to die in some Earth Kingdom backwater? You’re worthless. Weak. _Ungrateful-”_

This time, when she fell, she didn’t get up again. She caught her chin hard on the ground, jarring her head as she hit the ground, and the world spun in pain.

“It’s alright,” Mother cooed, kneeling by her side, sickly and cloying. “Just close your eyes. It’ll be alright.”

Somewhere, Zuko was screaming. But she was so _tired,_ and it couldn’t hurt to… just rest…

* * *

Ty Lee knew, intellectually, that walls presented a challenge more imposing than their pure physical properties. Someone who threw up a wall around their garden was saying _don’t try it_ in a way more emphatic than, say, a fence.

Ty Lee had never been very good at caring about that kind of thing, though, so she hauled herself over the boundaries of the Bei Fong Estate with barely a second’s thought.

Aang had wanted to be the one to do this, but Sokka had been weirdly skittish about the Avatar running off by himself, which Ty Lee guessed was fair, because he _had_ gotten captured once, and then arrested that other time, and really just generally was extremely good at getting himself in trouble really _really_ quickly, and Ty Lee didn’t mind helping! Honestly, this was nice, she was out in the fresh air, she was meeting people, and so far her little deal seemed to be holding!

Ty Lee wasn’t necessarily a hopeful person, but she was trying to learn.

So preoccupied, she slid down the boughs of an ornamental tree, and promptly leapt back up into it as the earth came alive beneath her feet, snapping at her heels like a sea of baby crocodiles.

And, from over the ornamental bridge, Ty Lee caught sight of the fizzing electric-green aura of the Blind Bandit, stomping into view, looking somehow simultaneously more dangerous _and_ more adorable than she had in the arena.

“Okay, I don’t know _who_ you think you are-”

“Hi! I’m Ty Lee,” Ty Lee said, waving from her perch in the tree. “Nice to meet you.”

“What are you doing in my garden?”

“You’re really strong, you know that?”

The Bandit looked taken aback. “I ...don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, you’ve got maybe ten seconds before I have you ejected from the premises-”

“Wanna come save the world?”

Things had gone south _pretty_ quickly after that, and sure, she’d maybe panicked a little when two armoured men with spears had turned up, and she _probably_ shouldn’t have kicked one into the ornamental pond and _maybe_ throwing the other guy halfway up the tree might have been overdoing it but all in all, Ty Lee considered, as the alarms began to ring and she scrambled back over the wall, the Bandit hadn’t _actually_ said no, so this probably counted as a win!

* * *

Azula woke, something she hadn’t necessarily expected. Blinking heavily, wiping unconsciousness from her eyes, she forced herself up on her elbows, a thin blanket slipping off her shoulders as she stared blearily around the small room, taking everything in in the light of the one candle burnt almost to a stub by her bed, the careless pile someone had made of what was left of her armour (dented and broken, but it had once been bright and shining and she could almost remember how proud she’d felt when she first wore it, or something like it), Mother, hands in her sleeves, looking down at her with almost perfectly concealed disappointment.

“...seen how she’s dressed, what were you _thinking?”_

A voice from out the door, woman’s, not mother’s though, too openly furious, a _new_ voice, and Mother shook her head, softly, ever so disappointed.

“Oh Azula, you’re upsetting people again.”

Another voice started, a man’s, and for a second Azula couldn’t breathe, until she realised she didn’t know this one either.

“And what was I supposed to do? She fainted in the road, right in front of us, in such a state that it wasn’t even clear she was a girl until we’d got her on the back of Lady, let alone what colour her armour was supposed to be. How was I supposed to explain it to Lee, that I’d realised we weren’t going to help her after all?”

The voices turned to whispers, moving out of reach, and all the while Mother looked placidly at the door, waiting for her moment, when suddenly the man’s voice returned in a rush of anger that pinned Azula to the wall.

“Fine. You want to deal with the firebender? Here’s a knife. If I’m such a fool, go cut her throat while she’s sleeping. Go do what you think I should have done.”

“There,” Mother said, with a soft satisfied sigh. “See? You don’t have to do anything. Just lie still.”

Azula tried to sit up with a start but Mother was looming over her, face still a self-righteous mask and her arm was out and she was holding Azula down pushing her back into the mattress and she’d never _touched_ her before and where was Zuko why wasn’t Zuko here he had to _save her-_

The door swung inwards and Azula tried to scream but mother’s hand was over her mouth and she was ten years old again knowing she had to be _silent_ and she couldn’t make a sound no matter how much her mind screamed and the sliver of light from the open door burned like a brand and suddenly it was gone, the door clicked closed, and mother was gone. And Azula was alone, again.

The man’s voice, once more, with an air of finality.

“I might be too sentimental, but don’t pretend it’s _simple.”_

* * *

There were, Toph knew, a _lot_ of advantages to being able to feel by earthbending. A day and a half flying in Appa’s saddle had almost managed to make her forget some of them. 

Sokka had been the one to suggest they take a while on the road, which was _great,_ and Toph knew it was at least kind of for her benefit because he kept turning to check on her while she wasn’t looking because he’d forgotten that she was _always_ looking.

They’d run into some other travellers, a pair of guys- one had a slow, steady heartbeat, one foot planted a little behind the other, resting most of his weight on his back heel, while the other guy, wide stance, almost straight Horse, seemed a little jittery. Not a _lot_ jittery, but his heartbeat had kicked up a little when the Avatar and company had flagged them down, like he was getting ready to fight or run, and that was-

Oh, oh _that_ was interesting. Toph cocked her head, and concentrated, kneading her toes into the earth for a more precise reading.

Yeah. No mistaking it. The girl, the one that had introduced herself as Ty Lee (but, privately, Toph had taken to thinking of her as Trouble, and it suddenly seemed like that name was gonna stick) was apparently about to have a heart attack.

There was a _lot_ of talking going on- apparently Right Foot In Guy was someone Sokka and his sister knew, and Water Tribe reunions were mostly yelling- but Toph tried to ignore it, tried to filter out Appa’s steady huffing, the lemur skittering around chasing bugs, leaping up off the ground, landing again in unpredictable spots, filtered all that out, and -listened wasn’t the right word for it, because the creatures that had taught her didn’t have _words,_ but there was no mistaking it.

Jitters and Trouble knew each other. And Jitters was trying to take advantage of the distraction that was the Water Tribe Yelling Time to slip away.

Oh no you don’t.

Toph flexed a couple rudimentary muscles, and the world obeyed, jutting a spur of rock up at _just_ the right moment for Jitters to trip and stumble and oh _whoops_ he just made a huge clatter and right on cue, the Avatar danced over to him and just _couldn’t_ let him leave without joining them for the impromptu tea and chat that was suddenly breaking out on the side of the road, it’d be just _so_ impolite to leave now, come on, take a load off.

Toph’s grin split her head in half, and she reached out and snatched Trouble’s elbow as _she_ tried to make herself scarce, guiding her towards the campfire that Sokka was huffing into life before she could go climb another tree again or whatever it was she’d been planning to do.

Toph liked knowing things, and she was going to know _all about_ what was going on here if she had something to say about it, and Toph Bei Fong had something to say about _everything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicide ideation, Azula having a real bad time, character undergoing a psychotic break, oblique references to physical abuse, Ursa, suicide idealisation by proxy


	14. We Are Disposable Creations

“What’s your name?”

Azula blinked, and looked to her left. The room swam into dull focus in the dim candlelight- a dusty bedroom, Mother lurking in one corner, arms folded, looking down her nose, a small child, too close, too loud, showing its teeth.

She could kill it without a thought. She forced her arms to her sides, keeping her breathing shallow.

“The boy asked you a question,” Zuko snarled, looming over her suddenly, too loud and too tangible. “Are you going to answer? Or are you too ashamed?”

Closing her eyes, for all the good it would do, she rolled over, facing the wall.

After a while, the child left, which was probably for the best.

* * *

Iroh used to believe in destiny. And why should he have not? He had been so _obviously_ suited to his position, so clearly meant to rule and to conquer, that he had never for an instant questioned that the universe had placed him in such a perfect position for those talents to be tested.

After, for a time, he had abandoned those beliefs along with everything else, raging ineffectually at a universe that had never been able to care.

But now? What was he supposed to call it, when he found that the man who he had been sharing the road with knew the two children who were the companions of the Avatar? And _what,_ short of some inscrutable divine intelligence, could explain the fact that the Avatar was also travelling with one of Azula’s childhood friends?

If only Iroh could remember her name. Unfortunately, he’d never really paid that much attention to his niece while she was growing up.

* * *

Toph scowled to herself as she nursed a cup of tea, toes bunching in the dirt. This was _not_ how she’d thought this would go.

Sokka and Sugar Queen were chatting with that one guy they happened to know, and Twinkletoes was trying not to look like he was trying to be part of the conversation, but Trouble and That Guy were just sitting across the fire and deliberately not looking at each other and this was so _boring_.

Time to liven things up a little.

“Hey, you know what I wanna know?”

* * *

Iroh busied himself with fishing a brick of tea out of his pack, giving himself time to think, pulling at the one worn corner until some came loose in his hands, massaging it with his fingers until it softened into flakes, falling apart in a way that he still found pleasing, and scattered them into the pot already heating over the fire.

A few short years and a whole life ago, he wouldn’t have _dreamed_ of drinking tea from a brick, would have demanded the finest leaves from half the world away be brought to satisfy his most idle cravings. He liked to think he knew better, now, now he owned nothing and had dominion over nobody.

Things were safer that way, certainly. He knew what disasters he caused when he was in charge. And he had finally learned that modest tea was far better than no tea at all.

Still, he hadn’t come up with an answer to the question: how was he going to get out of this without-

* * *

“What I wanna know,” Toph repeated, slightly annoyed that nobody had actually bothered to respond, “is how Trouble and that guy-” she jabbed a finger at where That Guy was, fiddling with the teapot- “know each other.”

It was a good delivery, and from the way Trouble and That Guy had froze she _knew_ it had to have landed right, but Sokka could be relied upon to not get a proper dramatic reveal.

“What do you mean how do Katara and that guy know each other?”

* * *

Oh.

Oh dear.

Oh he _really_ didn’t want to have to kill anyone today.

* * *

Trouble felt like she was trying to crawl up her own spine.

“He’s… he’s General Iroh. He’s the Fire Lord’s brother.”

…Toph couldn’t have said what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been _that-_ but before she could even process that Sokka was moving, unfurling up from his seat, leaping over the fire knocking the teapot over dashing it into the ground as he planted himself right between this Iroh guy and her and Trouble, and Toph was about to wonder if she should feel offended by that when she noticed the cold hum of the metal in his hands.

Oh. Oh this was _serious._

* * *

She woke up with a start, jerked out of a sleep she didn’t remember falling into, and pulled herself up into a sitting position before she could decide not to. Blinking sleep out of her eyes,  she peered around the small and dusty and lightless room.

The door was ajar. Her head hurt, and her tongue was coated in something thick and cloying. Throwing the covers aside with a sudden effort, Azula stumbled to her feet, and went in search of daylight.

* * *

Iroh closed his eyes, and sat back, folding his arms into his sleeves even as all around him blades were drawn and the Water Tribes man with whom he had been sharing the road leapt back as though scalded.

“I can assure you,” he intoned, loudly, clearly, steadily, a trick he had learned on campaign, how to cut through clamour with a word, “if you cut my head from my shoulders, my brother would not care even a little. He might even be grateful.”

* * *

Katara grabbed at her brother’s elbow before he could do something stupid.

“Sokka! He’s not attacked us! Can’t we at least hear him out?”

“This isn’t a _game,_ Katara,” Sokka spat, but she could hear the fear crawling up his throat but she was _serious_ but Bato was gripping his spear.

“Sokka’s right, Katara. We can’t trust a word he says. We have to deal with this.”

“General,” Katara intoned, stepping forwards, eyes locked on the old man that hadn’t left his seat. “What are you doing out here, then? If your brother doesn’t care, why are you here?”

Iroh sighed, and folded his hands, placatingly. Sokka, nearly hopping up and down with panic, did not look placated.

“I am-”

 _“Katara!_ Stop _fraternising_ with _the enemy!”_

“I am looking for my niece.”

“I don’t care what you s-” Sokka blinked, and for the first time his grip on the machete wavered, ever so slightly. _“Azula?”_

Iroh looked, for the first time, concerned.

“I beg your pardon?”

Sokka’s nostrils flared. “If your brother is the Fire Lord, then your niece is going to be Princess Azula, Only Daughter Of Fire Lord Ozai, And Heir To His Throne, right?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I mean she did introduce herself one time.”

* * *

The sunlight was startling, like an ocean after a drought, and as she pushed past the figures on the doorstep she almost didn’t notice the group of soldiers standing in the yard.

“Who’s this then?” the front soldier leered, eyes pivoting towards her, yellow teeth bared under curling lips. “You got a daughter you’ve been hiding all this time?”

“You afraid to tell this one who you are too?” Zuko opined, over the man’s shoulder, even as a body put itself in between her and the soldier.

“Leave it, Gow.”

“Go on, tell him.”

“Now now, that’s hardly polite. Who is she?”

“Or are you ashamed? Or have you finally figured it out?”

“Just a refugee. We’re putting a roof over her head until she’s strong enough to leave. She has nothing for you.”

“Tell them. Own up to it. You don’t deserve to hide it.”

“I think she can decide that for herself. Go on, girl, who are you?”

The body shielding her was wrenched aside, and an arm grabbed at her shoulder-

Zuko flinched. Azula screamed.

* * *

Ty Lee, now that she’d stopped panicking, was working on trying to believe what she was hearing.

Aang and his friends had run into Azula. More than once. Aang seemed _concerned_ about her _wellbeing._  

General Iroh seemed sure she wasn’t dead. Ty Lee’s chest thudded at the thought, too full, but full of what she couldn’t figure out.

“So… why was she chasing me?” Aang asked, without rancour, like it was a misunderstanding he was trying to figure out.

Iroh looked down at the ground. “I... that is my fault. Hunting the Avatar was the only pretext I thought I could use to get her out of the Palace without scandal. When my brother declared us traitors, it… seemed to be the only idea she had. I honestly could not tell you what was going through my niece’s head.”

Sokka frowned. “She never attacked me- us?- first. D’you think that means anything?”

General Iroh looked brightened by this new information. “Possibly! It is certainly good to hear she wasn’t attacking people indiscriminately.”

* * *

“My _name!”_ she screamed, curling fire around her fist as she sprang for the man’s throat, trailing fire as she barrelled him to the ground- “is _Princess Azula!”_ As he toppled backwards, trying in vain to breathe through a ruined neck, his friends stumbled over their feet, weapons half drawn as she charged, eyes unseeing, fire curling around her, still screaming- “The only child of Fire Lord Ozai!” Blue fire flared all around her, drowning out their screams in a roar, but lost through the noise she continued. “Heir to his throne!”

The fire died, and Azula sagged forward, adrenaline draining away in the pale sunshine.

“You may kneel now,” she whispered to the smoking corpses.

In the smoke, Zuko was laughing, fierce and wild and delighted, head thrown back, throat bared.

Looking up, through the haze of smoke, she could see the boy and his father staring at her, mouths open, mute in their horror. She drew herself up with a burst of effort, and stared at them imperiously, through lidded eyes.

“I am going to find the Avatar,” she confided, through shuddering breaths. “And I am going to kill my father. Do not stand in my way again.”

The silence that followed was broken all of a sudden when something hit her very hard on the back of the head and everything went black.

* * *

As the bison twisted its way into the sky, Iroh’s gaze was drawn to more material concerns. Such as the tall man that had still not lowered his spear.

“Well,” he sighed. “I suppose this is where we part ways.”

Or one of them died. But it probably wouldn’t help to mention that out loud. Besides, Iroh couldn’t afford to die here. He still had too much to fix.

“I suppose it is,” the man- Bato, finally a name to the face- said, slow, deliberate. Over the days, Iroh had gained an impression of a thoughtful, quiet man, slow to anger. He hoped to any Spirit listening that he’d been right in that estimation.

“If anything you said is true…”

Iroh said nothing, turning his back, tidying up the spilt tea set.

“Then I hope you find your niece.”

Iroh smiled, just a little.

“Thank you. Safe travels.”


	15. The Only Thing I'll Ever Ask of You

“You know,” Ty Lee said, one foot dangling carelessly over the edge of the cliff, “I’m not totally sure what he’s supposed to be learning right now.”

Katara looked down into the valley, where Aang was narrowly avoiding being crushed by a rolling boulder. She shrugged.

“Not my element, sorry.”

“Heh.”

Below, Toph the Blind Bandit stomped over and started haranguing the Avatar for, as far as Ty Lee could tell, doing the only sensible thing. If you’re going to be crushed by a boulder, the thing to do was get out of its way, right? That made sense, but maybe it was different for earthbenders.

To her right, Katara huffed prettily, and threaded her fingers together before stretching her arms overhead in a way that _probably_ wasn’t meant to be extremely distracting. Ty Lee, with a little effort, refocused her attentions on the Avatar, who was sheepishly enduring his dressing-down.

“Are you- d’you ever worry? About what happens if he doesn’t figure this out in time?”

Katara blinked, caught off-guard. “Huh?”

“Aang. He’s got a lot to do, and... “

And here was the thing. One of the things. Ty Lee had grown up in the Caldera. She knew- she _knew_ what kind of reception Aang would get, if he just dropped out of the sky one day and declared that he was going to fight the Fire Lord.

She didn’t like thinking about that. But nobody else _knew._ Everyone else, even Sokka, who was suspicious and pessemistic and had the most dismal aura of anyone Ty Lee had ever met that wasn’t called Mai, thought of the Fire Lord as some nameless Bad Guy that Aang would have to fight. They hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard the stories Ty Lee had. They hadn’t, to pick an example totally at random, watched Fire Lord Ozai beat a child to death in front of his entire court. For example.

Katara shrugged. “I know he’s got a long way to go, but… I believe in him. I think if anyone can do it, he can.”

Ty Lee held in a scream, a talent she’d perfected over the years, but the urge to grab Katara by the shoulders and shake her until Ty Lee wasn’t alone in her thoughts was almost overwhelming but-

 _But,_ the insidious little voice inside her, the voice that sounded like Azula, said, _you like her, don’t you? You don’t want to make this her problem. You want her to stay certain, because you wish you were certain too. You don’t want to scare that out of her, and you definitely don’t want her to be scared of you._

Ty Lee didn’t remember Azula ever being quite so observant when it came to human emotions, even before The Incident, but that was the thing about little voices.

So what should she do?

_Isn’t it obvious? Tell someone you like less._

Now _that_ sounded more like Azula.

“So,” Ty Lee started, hoping she sounded casual and not at all a tempest of worry, “where’s Sokka at today?”

“I think he said he was going hunting. Why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

* * *

Ty Lee ambled over towards the Blind Bandit, who was perched on a small throne of rubble, cracking peanuts open with her teeth, and spitting the husks out with obvious satisfaction.

“Hi, Trouble.” She inclined her head towards Ty Lee in greeting, but seemed otherwise comfortable not moving.

“Hey, Toph. Have you seen Sokka anywhere?”

The Bandit frowned, and cocked her head. “How come?”

“I just wanted to ask him something, and Katara said he went hunting, but that was this morning, and I’ve not seen him all day, and I don’t know if that’s a normal thing for hunting, I’ve never done it myself, but-”

“Okay, stop.” The Bandit held a hand out. “He’s,” she slid off her seat, and curled her toes into the rock- “about a hundred yards that way-” she jerked a thumb towards the forest. “Now what’s up? You’re buzzing like a hummingbird.”

“Oh, you know me-”

“We met like three days ago.”

“I’m just- can I ask a question?”

“...Sure.” Toph seemed suspicious, but she _had_ agreed to change the subject, so that was a success.

“What’s the boulder about? Isn’t getting out of the way the sensible thing to do?”

Toph snorted derisively. “Sure. If you can’t _do_ something about it.”

“Oh. Okay that makes sense, bye!”

“Hang on-” but Ty Lee made sure she was out of earshot before Toph got to the end of her sentence.

* * *

She found him... down a hole? Trapped in some kind of narrow crevasse, facing away from her, out into the woods, with the cub of a sabre-moose perched on his head. Sure. Why not.

"...Sokka?"

“Oh, hey!” Sokka said, trying to wiggle himself around, before giving up and bending his head backwards to get a better look at her. “Ty Lee, this is Foofoocudd- aaand he’s gone.” The cub scampered away, startled at her arrival, and vanished into the undergrowth. Sokka looked momentarily disappointed, but rallied quickly. “Still, at least you can get me out of this hole.”

Okay. Time to start. But maybe some completely normal small talk first. That should put him at ease.

“So, what’re you up to?”

Sokka raised his eyebrows, and waggled his hands below his chin in what might have otherwise been a shrug. “Y’know. Having an existential crisis while stuck down a hole. You?”

Ty Lee flopped down beside him, knocking up dust that set him spluttering.

“Oh, same,” she sighed.

Okay. This was it. Right? If she was going to do this, now had to be the time, right? If the universe was trying to send her messages, trapping him down a hole just as she had this idea, making it so he had to listen to her and couldn’t do anything to her if it went bad, had to be a thing, right? This had to be a good idea.

Right?

“I used to think the Universe had a plan. For everyone. It put us in places, pushed us towards people that would be important to us. It made sense to me, you know? I knew… I knew that there was a war, but I didn’t _know,_ right? I thought… I didn’t think about it.”

“This is all great but-”

“I stopped believing that, when… when I got married. I couldn’t believe that anything that _thought_ would do that- to me!”

“Yeah that makes sense, awful things happen and there’s not usually a lesson. Now about this hole-”

Ty Lee turned away from him, hugging her knees to her chest. It made things easier.

“I think I was wrong. I think I had to see what was being done to people. By the Fire Nation. The Universe wanted me to understand. So I could meet Katara, and Aang, and you, and even Toph. I wouldn’t have gone with you, if I’d still been Lady Ty Lee who thought the Universe only wanted good things to happen to me and didn’t want me to _do_ anything. And that’s important,  because... I want to tell you a story.”

“Okay? I kind of want you to get me out of this hole?”

“Zhao talked to himself all the time.”

* * *

Sokka froze.

“Are you… _sure_ I’m the one you want to tell this to?”

Ty Lee didn’t seem to be listening, leaning back on her palms, staring out into the underbrush like she was reading something in the leaves.

“He liked to talk about his plans for the future, about schemes to get ahead. I was a failed plan, but he’d had a lot of those, it seemed like. But there was one thing he only talked about when he was really angry, or drunk. Something he knew. A secret only he had, but didn’t know what to do with.

“He’d taken an extended leave, one year. He’d heard about a library, a place out in the desert, somewhere full of secrets. He thought it would help him, if he brought back some great secret that would help the war. He wanted to be seen as a hero. I think that was where he learned about the Spirits at the North Pole. So I guess it kind of worked?”

Sokka could hardly breathe. A thousand questions echoed through his head, but he swallowed hard, and kept his mouth shut.

“But he’d learned something else, too. And he talked about it. I don’t think he cared if I heard it, because he figured I’d never tell.

“Sokka,” and suddenly she was looking down at him, eyes wide, “what would you do, if I told you how to defeat the Fire Nation?”

Nothing.

Sokka had always been slightly proud of his ability to have an opinion on anything basically on command, but he opened his mouth and nothing tumbled out.

Years passed, seasons rolled across the world, civilisations rose and flourished and burned and were ground to dust, seas rose and flooded the land, the sun and all the stars winked out, reality crushed down to the head of a pin and exploded outward, Spirits and the material world weaved together and were wrenched apart, the first men raised their heads toward the sun, the badgermoles taught a pair of love-struck teenagers how to change the world, two Spirits made their home in the frozen North, Avatars appeared, changed the shape of civilisation, got settled, established a routine, and disappeared, the Fire Nation attacked, and Sokka’s sister prodded an iceberg at the wrong moment and Sokka tried to catch dinner and fell down a hole and Ty Lee told him that she knew how to defeat the Fire Nation and he was _still_ stuck down a hole with his jaw hanging open, trying to think of something clever to say.

“...Wha?”

* * *

Ty Lee swallowed, and tried to think like Azula. That helped, although she wished it didn’t.

“There’s going to be a day, kind of soon. Zhao called it The Darkest Day. That day, for eight minutes, there’s going to be an eclipse. For eight minutes, there won’t be any firebending. Nobody knows- Zhao destroyed all records in the library, and he couldn’t ever figure out a way to use the information, so he never told anybody. The only living person that knows the date is me. Tell me what you’d do with it, and I might tell you when it is.”

* * *

Sokka didn’t dare to breathe. This was- this was _huge._ This was the answer to every question that kept him up at night, this was the way they _lived,_ this was- this was too good to be true. The one person, the _only living person_ that knew the Fire Nation’s greatest weakness, and they just happened to join up because, what, Katara couldn’t stop picking up strays? This _was_ too good to be true.

He scowled at Ty Lee, who was either the best actor in history or was absolutely one hundred percent terrified of him right now. So that meant nothing.

He was going to have to trust her. At least until he came up with a better idea.

* * *

She hated this, she hated this _so_ _much,_ feeling his eyes narrow on her, watching his aura flare orange like burning cities, knowing there was no way out of this one, she’d talked too much, made herself too obvious, no way to back down or pretend she’d been kidding-

“I’m… honestly not sure? This is… a lot.” She almost interrupted, but a long finger raised, and he kept going, slower, but steady, now. “Here’s the deal. You get me out of this hole, I’ll… _we’ll_ think of something. Together. Deal?”

* * *

That honestly didn’t sound like what she’d wanted- what she’d wanted, more than anything, was to pass this off to him and then let _him_ worry about it- but… that wouldn’t be fair, right? Maybe this wasn’t the kind of thing only one person should deal with.

“Deal.”

“Great. Oh! I forgot to mention, as part of this deal you absolutely have to get me out of this hole first.”

A bellowing roar cut across the forest as, way too close for comfort, a mother sabre-moose was reuinited with her cub.

“Yeah that seems fair.”


	16. Think I Need a Devil to Help Me Get Things Right

“What do you think they’re talking about?”

Katara frowned, but kept the rhythm, passing the ribbon of water to Aang and back again, balancing it at  _ almost _ the point of freezing, just to prove she could, while she considered the question.

It had been ... an hour? Since Ty Lee had dragged Sokka back to camp. Since she and Sokka had retreated to one of the tents, only stopping long enough for Sokka to firmly demand that they not be disturbed. Which was ...weird, right? It was definitely weird, and that was why she wanted to go stick her nose in, just to make sure- to figure out what was going on.

“I’unno,” Toph shrugged, from the sidelines, idly picking at her teeth, “maybe he’s asking for pointers in how to be not totally useless in a fight?”

Everything Toph did seemed deliberately calibrated to get on Katara’s nerves. This time, Katara tried a new tactic: she completely ignored it, and carried on the exercise, the water glinting in the sunlight as she and Aang passed it between them.

After a few moments, Toph snorted in irritation, and stood up, full of restless energy, before abruptly sitting down again. Katara tried not to smirk. It was all about the little victories.

* * *

“Let me check I’ve got this right. So there’s  _ one _ family that runs the Fire Nation? Ever since- what’s it called, the reuniting?”

“The Great Unification, and yeah? What do you mean?”

“I mean in the South High Chieftainship gets passed around between families- the High Chief nominates a successor while he’s still alive, and it’s generally kind of not done to nominate your own son, at least without making sure he’s the best pick- and we’re getting off topic. So this one family… what happens if they don’t have kids? Or if the kids all die?”

Ty Lee frowned. “It’s never happened.”

Sokka raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Never?”

“Well, there were rumours about Sozin’s great-great grandmother-”

“You know? Off-topic. It’s what people believe, right?”

Ty Lee was having some trouble keeping up with Sokka’s abrupt changes of tack. “I guess?”

“-Oh, that’s worth checking, does the Fire Lord have to be a guy?”

Ty Lee blinked. “A guy? Oh, a man? No, why would that be-”

“Oh good, that could have been a problem,” Sokka said, looking back down at his notes, obviously only halfway listening again. “...So is the title Fire Lady or something?”

“What? No? Still Fire Lord?”

* * *

“You know, it is kind of weird, now you mention it,” Toph volunteered, after a while. “I didn’t get the feeling they talked much.”

Aang’s brow furrowed, as he tried to remember any time Ty Lee and Sokka had ever had more than the most cursory of conversations, and came up almost entirely blank.

“I think they talked about trying to break me out of jail that one time?”

* * *

Sokka rubbed his eyes, staring down at his scrawled notes, trying to ignore the fact that one of his legs had gone to sleep beneath him.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have an idea. It was that he had two. One plan had come to him the second he’d not been preoccupied with being stuck down a hole, a simple, shining idea that had basically only one downside. The  _ other _ plan, though, had snuck up on him, riding a wave of doubts in the time it had taken to get somewhere private where they could talk without being overheard.

The first one, the good one, the obvious one, the sensible one, he hadn’t worked out how to sell Ty Lee on yet. So until he figured that out, he was stuck trying to see how The Other Plan would fail.

“Explain the-” he glanced down at his scrawled notes- “the duelling thing, the Agni Kai, again? I don’t think I got it.”

* * *

Ty Lee was, officially, lost. When she’d told Sokka, dangled the Darkest Day in front of him, she’d thought… she thought she’d have to try and talk him out of an invasion of the Fire Nation. Right? That had been the  _ point _ of telling Sokka, maybe. So it would be less of a betrayal than if  _ she’d _ been the one to suggest it.

But that hadn’t been where Sokka’s brain seemed to have gone. Instead he was asking weird probing questions about succession and the rules of Agni Kai, and she was finding herself explaining how one of her first friends had died.

“Okay so  _ can _ you substitute participants? Like, ‘I suck at fighting or I’m not a firebender so here’s my huge friend to kick you around on my behalf’?”

“Not… exactly. A slight against the Fire Lord’s war council was taken as a slight against the Fire Lord himself. That was why Ozai took the duel himself.”

“Hmm. Okay that’s gonna make things harder.” His brow furrowed, and he slumped forward, staring down at his scrawled notes.

“Sokka? It’s going to make what harder?”

“Hmm?”

“Sokka you haven’t actually explained your plan.”

He blinked, and sat up with a start.

“I haven’t? Well, it’s… actually it’s not simple at all, it’s way too complicated.”

* * *

“I’m gonna go check on them,” Toph said, with a start, jumping to her feet.

Katara tried not to think of it as a victory as the earthbender stomped over towards the tent, but gave up on that quickly and settled on luxuriating in the fact that it had been Toph that cracked first.

* * *

“...and that’s it. That’s what I got.”

Ty Lee blinked.

That… hadn’t been what she’d expected. It made the Pentapox Ruse seem straightforward in comparison.

“Sokka,” she said, slowly, like she was treading around broken glass, “this is…  _ so _ risky.”

“I know,” he said, jaw set, staring hard at the ground. “But if we don’t want to go to war with the Fire Nation, this is all I could think of.”

Ty Lee blinked. “Sure but… -what did you say?”

Sokka shrugged, still looking down. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t go for the obvious ‘tell the Earth King about this so he can stage a successful invasion’ kind of plan, so. Here. A crazy plan.”

Oh he was a  _ lot _ more like his sister than she’d given him credit for.

“Sokka… I- you’re right that I don’t want my home to be invaded. But… I don’t want Ozai to win. I want him  _ stopped.  _ He’s…” a shadow behind a wall of flame, a pillar lurking in the background every time she visited Azula and her brother in the palace, watching in the darkness as Azula and her brother grew colder and crueler every time Ty Lee saw them, a giant striding towards his son kneeling on the flagstones, a raised fist black with blood, Azula’s eyes staring wide and  _ terrified _ when Ty Lee begged her to help escape-

She realised she was breathing hard, and looked up at Sokka, until he looked up and there was that light in his eyes again, but Ty Lee realised she wasn’t scared of it any more.

“...He needs to go down.”

“Who does?”

Daylight flooded the tent as Toph strode in, and Ty Lee flinched like she’d been caught stealing sweets.

Sokka, for his part, grabbed Toph’s hand, pulling her into the tent.

“Toph! Can we borrow you? We could really use a fresh set of eyes on this.”

“Well in that case you have absolutely come to the wrong person,” Toph replied, but consented to being guided to the floor.

* * *

Aang sat, feet trailing in the stream, brow furrowed as he stared at the tent that had swallowed Toph whole.

“I kind of wanna go check on them,” Katara announced, making no particular effort to move.

“Yeah, but that’s what Toph did. So if you go check on them they’re gonna grab you too, so I’ll be out here by myself. And  _ I  _ can’t go check on them or  _ you’ll  _ be stuck out by yourself.”

Katara frowned, trying to unpick the conundrum. “We could both go?”

Aang shook his head. “Tent’s too small.”

She sighed, defeated by logic. “You’re right.”

* * *

“So the Council of Five control…” Sokka blinked, sleepily, and slumped forwards, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, dragging them down his face with a grimace. “... _ uuuugh. _ My brain’s falling out.”

Toph shrugged, unsympathetically. This did little to deter Sokka, who flopped onto his back, melodramatically.

“This wouldn’t have happened last season,” he muttered, to the tentpole. “Winter was so much simpler. We showed up in a place, they had some problem like an argument with the village next door, or secretly being terrorists, or not being able to figure out how to make balloons work, or a Fire Nation invasion, or they were all idiots being conned by an old lady, and Aang or Katara would get involved, we’d all learn a valuable lesson about ethics or science or how I’m right and should be listened to, and then we’d just leave, and go to the next place.”

Toph considered this.

“Yeah I wasn’t here for any of that.”

“I did, a little,” Ty Lee offered, helpfully. “One time a village put Aang in jail for some reason.”

Toph cocked her head. “Oh yeah, he mentioned. I didn’t figure Twinkletoes had it in him.”

Sokka waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, no, they were putting him on trial for something he did in a past life. Speaking of, d’you think we could argue that Aang counts as a Fire Nation citizen because he was one last time he was alive?”

Ty Lee shrugged. “I mean, he was. It’s a fact. I don’t think it’s a rule that you stopped being a citizen just because you died?”

* * *

Aang sighed, and flopped on his back, staring at the clouds. Momo, sensitive to his favourite human’s moods, jumped onto his stomach.

Idly, Aang patted the lemur on the head.

“Whatever they’re talking about, I wish they’d come out and tell  _ us.” _

* * *

“Benefits of the Normal Plan: Bato told Katara and me where Dad’s got the fleet holed up, so we should get them on side pretty easy.”

Toph snorted, derisively. “Great. A bunch of non-benders,  _ real _ helpful.”

Sokka’s eyes narrowed, as Ty Lee looked uncomfortable. “You know what’s a really easy fight? A non-bender with a spear up against a bender that  _ can’t bend.” _

“Point taken,” Toph conceded, without grace.

“Benefits of the Crazy plan: they’d never see it coming?” Ty Lee proffered. “Also if it works there’d be a lot less fighting?”

Sokka shrugged. “Sure, I guess. So, we’ve got two plans. All in favour of telling Aang about the non-crazy one?”

Toph scratched under her chin, thoughtfully. “Let him pick.”

Sokka frowned. “You sure? Because he’s almost certainly going to choose the crazy one; I don’t know if you’ve picked up on that yet but Aang hates doing things the easy way.”

Toph shrugged. “Still. It’d be good for him to make the decision. It’s not exactly a rolling boulder but it’s close enough.”

Sokka’s brows furrowed. “Can’t say I like that you’re going into this with ulterior motives, but okay.”

* * *

“Aang,” Sokka said, face uncharacteristically blank as he led the small procession out of the tent towards where Aang and Katara were still languishing, “We’ve got a plan. Actually we’ve got two.”

* * *

The first plan, the Normal Plan, was simple.

The Avatar, with the backing of the Southern and Northern Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom soldiers loyal to the Council of Five, would spearhead an invasion of the Caldera, the capital city of the Fire Nation. With the advantage of Ty Lee’s knowledge of the city’s sea defences, the invaders would be able to reach the city proper in time to capitulate on the eight minutes of helplessness, and kill or capture Fire Lord Ozai and his entire War Council. With their entire high command taken out of the picture, the Fire Nation forces in the colonies could be taken apart piecemeal, while the Navy would be unprepared for an all new, aggressive Water Tribes coalition. The Fire Nation could, effectively, cease to exist.

With any luck, the war could be over within the year.

* * *

“I hate it.”

“I thought you might,” sighed Sokka. “The second plan, on the other hand, will probably kill us all. Still, Toph thinks you should be the one to decide, and I guess that makes sense, so: what do you know about Fire Nation laws of succession?”

“...Basically nothing?”

“You sound like me five hours ago. Here goes:”

* * *

Step one: locate one vagabond Princess, lost and alone in the wilds of the Earth Kingdom.

Step two: check she’s not dead.

Step three: convince her, somehow, to work with us to kill her dad. (Ty Lee thinks this might be possible, since her dad is the Worst in a really not fun kind of way, and also ordered his entire army to kill her on sight (this will be a problem later) but also thinks this might be hard, since she was basically raised to be completely loyal to the Fire Lord, and who knows what she thinks of Ozai these days)

Step four: Aang you need to memorize the following facts, it is going to be really important you say the right things when the time comes:

                 One: you are a Fire Nation citizen like a thousand times over;

                 Two: the Fire Lord is a filicide, and attempted to murder his brother and daughter;

                 Three: a challenge to Agni Kai is a legally-binding thing, and can be to the death;

                 Four: you can duel someone in Agni Kai on behalf of someone else,  _ technically; _

Step five: you drop out of the sky about two minutes before the Darkest Day, yell the first two facts you memorized in step four, and challenge Ozai to an Agni Kai for rule of the Fire Nation. If he wins, you die, but if you win, he stops being Fire Lord (honestly Ty Lee made me put this in, I think you should just kill him it’d make things much cleaner plus  _ wow  _ he sounds like a jerk);

Step six(a): if he accepts, do something dramatic just as the Darkest Day starts, make it look like you did it, and then kick him into next week the second the duel starts and he realises he can’t fight back;

Step six(b) if he doesn’t accept, do as it says in six(a), except skip the whole ‘duel starts’ bit and just flatten the guy;

Step seven: proclaim Azula the new Fire Lord before anyone has time to think of a way to complain (this is why her being declared an enemy of the Fire Nation is a problem, but apparently heredity counts for a lot there);

Step eight: stomp on her foot until she agrees to a truce with the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom.

With a  _ stupid  _ amount of luck, the war could be over before summer ended.

* * *

When Sokka was done talking, Aang sat quiet for a long moment.

“So,” he said, after a while, “what do you guys think?”

“I think we’ve said what we think,” Toph interrupted, before anyone could say anything. “What do  _ you _ think?”

“I-” his first instinct was to stall, to obfuscate, and honestly that had always worked for him before, so “I think I’ll need to think about it.”

“Okay. We’ll wait,” Toph said, staring him down with sightless eyes, and folded her arms in a way that she  _ knew _ had to come off as a challenge. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve already decided which plan you prefer, and you just don’t want to say it because Sokka might get upset.”

“Hey, I-”

Aang hated fighting. He hated arguing, hated losing his temper, hated the way the world was stopping and slowing and waiting for  _ him, _ hated the responsibility, hated the terror that knotted his stomach when he felt them waiting for  _ him _ to tell them what to do, hated the fact that Toph was  _ right, _ even if she felt like she had to say it like that- he  _ had _ decided, decided from the moment he’d heard the first plan.

He’d decided.

“I’m not a soldier,” he said, meeting Toph’s vacant gaze.  _ “None  _ of us should be soldiers.”

“Aang, think about this,” Sokka interrupted, pleading. “If we do this, if we don’t tell the Earth King about this- and they find  _ out _ we didn’t tell them… they already probably don’t like the way we dealt with that general Fong guy.”

“Sokka,” Aang raised a hand, and Sokka fell silent. “Sokka, thank you. All of you, thank you. This feels right. This is how we win this.”

It was strange, how it wasn’t so bad, feeling all of them looking,  _ listening; _  he’d jumped off the ledge and found he could fly.

“Okay,” Sokka deflated, but Aang thought he could see him smile, just a little. “So we just need to find one person in an entire continent. How hard could it be?”

* * *

“Thank the Spirits you’ve arrived,” the man said, bustling Commander Suki through the farmhouse. “We didn’t know what to do with her.”

“Hmm,” Suki replied, noncommittally, choosing not to clarify that she had only ordered her troops to stop at the tiny farm because of the neat row of graves  _ almost _ concealed in the field nearby.

“She called herself Princess Azula,” the man continued, babbling almost to himself. “I found her collapsed in the road- but I didn’t know who she was until she killed Gow and his boys.”

Suki stopped short. “Gow?”

The man’s brows furrowed. “King’s men. Not much better than bandits, if I can speak ill of the dead- they were round here to collect ‘taxes’, but… they were the law around here, and now we don’t have anyone.”

Suki cocked her head. “And this… Princess Azula killed them all?”

The man nodded, tight-lipped. “Yes. Never seen anything like it, nor would I want to again. Blue fire everywhere, screaming about the Fire Lord. Then she babbled some nonsense about trying to find the Avatar, and I don’t know what would have happened, if my wife hadn’t got behind her and knocked her out with a shovel.”

Suki blinked. “Blue fire?”

“Yep. Is that notable?”

“Maybe. She in here?” she gestured towards the door, with the heavy wooden chair propped up against it, holding it closed.

“Yes,” he affirmed, and she stepped forward and pulled the chair away, letting the door swing outwards with a slow grinding creak.

As Suki stepped across the threshold she was hit with a wave of stale air, tinged with fevered sweat that made her nose wrinkle, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she began to make out a figure, laid out on the bed, that jerked its head up to meet her with startling speed.

Princess Azula. Suki remembered this one. A single firebender had torn up half the village without even seeming to notice. But it was hard to hold the image of that morning in her head while confronted with this figure, languishing in the dark, helpless and bedridden.

_ She killed four armed men two days ago, _ Suki reminded herself, and swallowed an unwelcome burst of sympathy. It wouldn’t do to underestimate any firebender, let alone this one.

“Princess Azula,” she said, defaulting to her Talking To Subordinates voice, and trying not to look too hard at the way Azula’s eyes kept darting to something that wasn’t there. After a moment, the princess’ head lolled, and Suki had to force herself to remain impassive.

 “You work for the Avatar.”

That, Suki hadn’t expected. Her surprise must have shown on his face, because the princess continued.

“I mean, you’re dressed like him. A past him. Just like one of his soldiers was. So you must be working for him. Unless you’re just… a fan. Ahaha.”

Suki forced her spine to stiffen, and she squared her jaw. “Yes. I do work with the Avatar. I can take you to him, if you come with me and my Warriors.”

Again, the girl in the bed glowered at an empty patch of air for a moment, but shook her head, and unfolded, sitting upward, and stepped into the sunlight.

Suki had to force herself not to step backwards. Azula’s eyes were sunken and hollow, staring holes through her, and across her face a familiar scar blazed, looking somehow as red and angry as it had the day the Princess had come to Kyoshi Island.

_ “Well,” _ she announced, in a cut-glass accent that Suki might have otherwise taken as mockery, and she raised a hand, gesturing with delicate fingers that ended in muddy, unkempt nails. “Lead the way.”


End file.
